Robert “Beto” O’Rourke dropped out of the Democrat presidential primary contest on Friday as his promise to confiscate AR-15s and AK-47s failed to resonate.
O’Rourke campaigned on a government-mandated buyback of AR-15 rifles that seemed confiscatory. Then on September 12, 2019, he confirmed the confiscatory nature of the push, saying, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15.”
The next day, September 13, he told MSNBC that the government buyback of AR-15s and AK-47s would not be “voluntary.” Rather, he stressed, “It is not voluntary, I want to be sure we make the distinction here, it is mandatory. It will be the law. You will be required to comply with the law.”
When O’Rourke’s confiscatory talk appeared to hurt Democrats’ larger gun control efforts, CNN’s Alisyn Camerota tried to give him a way out. She did this by intimating that the ban would only disarm the law-abiding citizens, as criminals would not obey it.
But when she asked O’Rourke if he “[expected] mass shooters to follow the law” he responded in the affirmative, confirming his belief that mass shooters would hand over their AR-15s if the law demanded it.
Polls did not reward O’Rourke’s gun control push, and on Friday, he announced he was pulling out of the race:
As things now stand, Beto is out but AR-15s and AK-47s are in.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.