Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke has once again endorsed the confiscation of assault rifles, telling multiple town hall events that people who own AR-15s or AK-47s should not be allowed to keep them.
Speaking to veterans at a town hall event in San Angelo on May 21, the Democrat candidate for Texas governor made the bold policy announcement, only days before the mass shooting occurred in Uvalde at Robb Elementary School.
“My kids are my conscience,” Beto said. “And I may win or lose this race, but I’m always going to have to face them and answer for what I’ve done or failed to do when I had the chance to do something. And I just took the position that may not be politically popular or maybe too honest that only should no one be able to purchase an AR-15 or an AK-47,” he added.
He argued that the rifles were “designed to kill humans and that high-impact, high-velocity round will just tear up everything inside you.” Not only should the purchase of any more of the rifles be blocked, but Beto advocated outright confiscation of them.
“I don’t think that the people who have them right now in civilian use should be able to keep them,” he said.
Beto O’Rourke unambiguously endorses government mandated gun confiscation. pic.twitter.com/NgRoWZzBRD
— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) May 31, 2022
Beto doubled down on his remarks at an event later that day at a second veteran town hall in Abilene. “I think we are fools to believe anything other than that these weapons of war will be continued to be used with greater frequency against our fellow Americans,” he told the audience. “I don’t think we should have AR-15s or AK47s in civilian life. They belong on a battlefield.”
O’Rourke, whose given birth name was Robert, has moved back and forth multiple times on the issues of straight-up confiscation of assault rifles.
In his initial failed challenge against Senator Ted Cruz in 2018, Beto said in a 2018 radio interview that “if you own that gun, keep that gun,” saying that “nobody” wants to enact firearm confiscation. “To be clear … if you purchased that AR-15, if you own it, keep it. Continue to use it responsibly,” he said at the time.
By the time he unsuccessfully ran for the Democrat nomination for president for 2020, he famously exclaimed to a Democrat debate audience that, “hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15, AK-47.”
However, in February of this year, he moved back again against confiscation. “I’m not interested in taking anything from anyone,” he told reporters. “What I want to make sure that we do is defend the Second Amendment. I want to make sure that we protect our fellow Texans far better than we’re doing right now.”
Beto hit headlines again this month, when he crashed a press conference by Governor Greg Abbott addressing what happened in Uvalde. The town’s mayor, Don McLaughlin, called him a “sick son of a b*tch” for crashing the presser and turning it into a “political” event.
He was subsequently confronted by conservative reporter Drew Hernandez outside the NRA Convention in Houston, who asked him how he felt about “exploiting dead kids.”
BETA MALE: I confronted @BetoORourke today and asked him why he decided to exploit dead kids, he refused to give me an answer. He sure seems big and bold on stage, but when confronted he won’t even look at me pic.twitter.com/7QBkz2TT3D
— Drew Hernandez (@DrewHLive) May 27, 2022
