Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke refused to respond to a question during Friday night’s debate about if he plans to confiscate AR-15s if he wins the gubernatorial election.
The moderator of the debate had questioned O’Rourke about how he has given conflicting answers about that in the past.
When O’Rourke was running for president in 2019, he infamously said “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against Americans anymore.”
However, in February 2022, while running for governor, he said that he is “not interested in taking anything from anyone.”
The moderator asked him which position was true.
O’Rourke danced around the question and said that he wants to raise the legal age from 18 to 21 when buying a long gun, institute red flag laws, and pass universal background checks.
“After losing 23 of my neighbors to somebody armed with a weapon of war. After talking to these families who could only identify their children in Uvalde by the shoes that they were wearing, it’s clear to me that the only place that an AR-15 or an AK-47 makes sense is on a battlefield. But as governor of the state of Texas, I need to be focused on what we can get done, raising the minimum age of purchase to 21. We can get that done. Red flag law. We’ll get that done. Universal background checks. We will get that done. We’ll make progress and take action where this governor has failed,” O’Rourke said.
The moderator asked again, “Just to be clear, yes or no, are you for confiscating AR-15-style weapons?”
O’Rourke still did not answer.
“I’m for making sure that we make progress. Those families that I was just with from Uvalde want us to take action. This is the common ground. I’ve listened to Republicans and Democrats alike on this. We can agree on this much. Raise the age to 21, red flag law and universal background checks,” O’Rourke said.
