Beto O’Rourke Asks Fellow Candidates to Support Gun Control Plan

Democrat presidential hopeful Robert “Beto” O’Rourke is asking the remaining field of Democrat presidential contenders to support a gun control plan that includes banning “assault weapons” and licensing all other gun owners.

O’Rourke used a Teen Vogue op-ed to urge his fellow candidates to support gun control demands set forward by the activists in March for Our Lives.

He wrote, “I’m calling on every other candidate in this race — and every member of our party in Congress — to meet the boldness of the American people and sign onto the March For Our Lives Peace Plan.”

He suggested Democrats have waited too long for the kind of gun control the students are openly advocating, and that it is time to step forward and support it.

O’Rourke wrote, “We can stick by what we’ve been doing — playing it safe, while we beg Mitch McConnell to take action on the floor of Congress. Or we can follow the lead of the students marching for their lives and for all of ours, who are demanding we do more to protect them.”

The March for Our Lives Peace Plan includes “a national licensing and registry system” for gun owners, an “assault weapons” ban, and “a national gun buy-back program to reduce the estimated 265-393 million firearms in circulation by at least 30 percent.”

There is overlap between the March for Our Lives Peace Plan and O’Rourke’s own gun control plan, in that he is pushing a government enforced buyback of all AR-15 and AK47 rifles. During the September 12, 2019, Democrat debate he said, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15.”

The next day, September 13, 2019, O’Rourke told MSNBC that his AR-15 buyback would be “mandatory,” rather than voluntary.

O’Rourke went so far as to claim that Texans who own AR-15s actually want to give them up.

The Hill quoted O’Rourke saying:

But even from those Texans who own AR-15s, they’ve told me this themselves, “I don’t need this. I don’t need it to hunt, I don’t need it to protect myself. It was fun to use. I like taking it out to the range, but if giving this back, or cutting it to pieces, or selling it to the government helps to keep us safer, then by all means let’s do it.”

The National Shooting Sports Foundation calculates there are 16 million-plus privately owned AR-15s in the U.S.

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.