Beto O’Rourke responded to a Texas lawmaker on Friday who dared the former Congressman to take his AR-15, calling the FBI to report his tweet as a “death threat.”
“My AR is ready for you Robert Francis,” Texas Republican Representative Briscoe Cain wrote on Twitter after O’Rourke warned during the Democrat debate that “Hell, yes, we’re gonna take your AR-15.
Twitter removed the offending post after O’Rourke highlighted it on Twitter, but did not delete O’Rourke’s tweet highlighting what he called a “death threat.”
O’Rourke discussed the issue on Friday morning during an interview with CNN, criticizing Cain for his tweet.
“That’s exactly why Briscoe Cain should not have an AR-15,” he said, lecturing the congressman.
O’Rourke said his campaign called the FBI to report the offending tweet, as they saw the message as a threat.
“I believe that someone on the campaign did — contacted the FBI, contacted Twitter,” he said. “I mean anytime you have somebody threatening to use violence against somebody in this country to resolve a political issue or really for any reason that’s a matter for law enforcement.”
O’Rourke said Cain’s tweet was proof that no one should ever own an AR-15.
“It really drives home the point, better than I could have made, Rep. Briscoe Cain is making the case that no one should have an AR-15 that they can hold over someone else in the country and say, look, if we disagree on something, let me introduce you to my AR-15. Absolutely wrong.”
O’Rourke made the rounds on morning television programs, reasserting his demand to ban and confiscate AR-15s.
He said in an interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe that if he was elected president, he would change the law to make owning an AR-15 illegal.
“It’s not voluntary … it is mandatory, it will be the law, you will be required to comply with the law,” he said.
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