'Hell, yes,' Beto O'Rourke's call to confiscate AR-15s pushes gun debate to new level

HOUSTON — Hell, yes.

Beto O’Rourke’s declaration at Thursday night’s Democratic presidential debate that he wants to confiscate all 10 million or more assault-style weapons owned by Americans electrified both sides of the nation’s gun divide.

"Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47," he said. "We're not going to allow them to be used against fellow Americans anymore."

On one side of the gun divide, the unvarnished call for confiscation was a gift, proof that Democrats really are a bunch of gun-grabbing liberals. But after a bloody summer of mass shootings, including the rampage that left 22 Walmart shoppers dead in O’Rourke’s hometown of El Paso, public support is growing for such measures.

Even many gun owners tell pollsters they’re willing to limit or even end access to assault-style weapons, which makes the political implications of O’Rourke’s stance uncertain.

But if it propels him through the Democratic primaries, would it disqualify him with too many voters in the general election? Does he risk losing Texas, with its proud tradition of gun ownership and some of the nation’s loosest restrictions?

“I don't know if it's too far for any one state or any one politician's prospects to be the nominee. But I think it's the right thing to do,” O’Rourke insisted after leaving the Houston debate stage Thursday night.

Defenders of the Second Amendment have long argued that the real goal behind calls to restrict access to assault-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, or to tighten regulations on gun ownership and sales, was to disarm the populace.

The slippery slope argument has been politically potent. Republicans, Trump especially, have painted Democrats as gun-grabbers.

The president made that point Thursday night even before O’Rourke’s comments at the debate, during a speech to congressional Republicans at their annual retreat in Baltimore.

“Democrats want to confiscate guns from law-abiding Americans, so they’re totally defenseless when somebody walks into their house with a gun. It’s like, `Whatever you want. Whatever you want. I’m defenseless. Whatever you want.’ How crazy is this?” Trump said.

Vice President Mike Pence, at the GOP retreat Friday, zeroed in on confiscation. "You had leading candidates for the highest office in the land talking about taking firearms away from law-abiding citizens," he said.

Only three of the top 10 Democratic candidates support mandatory buybacks.

The 2020 front-runners have all stopped short of embracing mandatory buybacks. Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have expressed support for voluntary buybacks of assault-style weapons. So have former housing secretary Julian Castro and Pete Buttigieg, an Indiana mayor.

Earlier this month in New Hampshire, Sen. Kamala Harris called it “a good idea” to require owners of assault weapons to sell them to the government, because “we have to take those guns off the streets.” Sen. Cory Booker also has expressed support, though not with the ardor that O’Rourke displayed Thursday night.

A Quinnipiac University poll released on Aug. 29 found a near even split on the idea of mandatory buybacks: 46% of Americans favored the idea, 49% opposed it. The partisan divide was stark: 71% of Democrats like the idea, compared with 18% of Republicans.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll released last week found that 31% of Republicans and 55% of independents would support mandatory buybacks, suggesting that the political taboo on such ideas has eroded.

O'Rourke's comments drew pushback and even threats from gun rights advocates. State Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Republican from Deer Park, near Houston, warned via Twitter that his "AR is ready" for O'Rourke, and he later posted an image of a Gonzales flag, a banner flown during an 1835 battle in Texas that features a cannon and the words "Come and Take It."

O’Rourke’s shift

During the Senate race in Texas last year, O’Rourke called for a ban on manufacture and import of assault-style weapons but offered assurance that anyone who already owned an AR-15 or similar gun could keep it.

That straddle allowed him to dispute allegations that his ultimate aim was confiscation — a charge that Sen. Ted Cruz included in a ditty that mocked his challenger as an extremist out of touch with the Texas mainstream.

O’Rourke acknowledges that his stance has shifted significantly since the Senate race.

He points to the Aug. 3 rampage in El Paso, after a gunman who had expressed anger at immigration targeted Hispanics.

“I thought I had said what I needed to say on guns when I was campaigning across Texas,” he said, noting as he did during that campaign that Texas has a proud history of responsible gun ownership. “But especially after El Paso, I had to really think this through and realize that even if we were able to achieve an end to the sales of assault weapons, that would be insufficient.

"There would still be more than 10 million such weapons in the hands of Americans, and even if nearly all of these owners are law-abiding," he said, “as long as they are out there, they have the potential to be used against us as they were in Midland, Odessa, El Paso and Sutherland Springs and Santa Fe High School.”

“The American people are there,” he said, and that includes gun owners. “It's just time for that to be reflected in our leadership.”

Among Democrats, and among gun control advocates, there’s a distinct lack of consensus on the timing and wisdom of confiscation.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, Biden's home state, lamented on CNN that O'Rourke's stance could haunt Democrats, because "that clip will be played for years at Second Amendment rallies with organizations that try to scare people by saying, 'Democrats are coming for your guns.' "

The National Rifle Association lashed out, asserting that O'Rourke "would do anything to get ahead. He promised confiscation of commonly owned rifles — leaving law-abiding Americans defenseless."

Everytown for Gun Safety, the group founded by media mogul and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has focused on a push for red flag laws and universal background checks. It has not called for mandatory buybacks, and while it highlighted candidates’ gun-related comments during the Houston debate, its Twitter account ignored O’Rourke’s advocacy for confiscation.

“You're not going to see every candidate take up what Beto has said,” said Peter Ambler, executive director of Giffords, the gun control advocacy group founded by former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, after she was severely wounded in a shooting.

But he added, O’Rourke has a certain moral authority on the issue after the El Paso rampage and his visibility afterward, and “assault weapons ownership is not synonymous with gun ownership.”

The debate wasn't even over before the O'Rourke camp sought to capitalize on the moment by putting $30 T-shirts on sale that read "HELL YES WE'RE GOING TO TAKE YOUR AR-15," though aides said he hadn't rehearsed that line, they just moved quickly to put it on campaign apparel.

The NRA called it "disgusting."

O’Rourke’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, boasted after the debate that “He is driving the issue of guns, which others on that stage have felt like they were leaders on that.”

She shrugged off the idea that he’s risking support in Texas’ Super Tuesday primary or, if he manages to win the nomination, handing Republicans a gift by playing into their narrative of Democrats as gun grabbers.

“That’s a completely false argument ... that you can't talk about gun reform, you can't push on this, because it's not a palatable issue in a general election or a place like Texas,” Dillon said. She pointed to the growing movement of groups fighting to curb gun violence:  March for Our Lives, Moms Demand Action and others. “People are calling for bold leadership, people that aren't afraid to do hard things."

Mo Elleithee, a Democratic strategist and executive director of the Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University, agreed that the rash of shootings has turned public opinion and created an opening even for measures such as mandatory buybacks.

With every mass shooting involving an assault-style weapon, he said, “There is a growing recognition that these specific types of weapons are too dangerous to have on the streets.”

The political pressure grows, particularly from suburban moms across the country, whose support could tip the 2020 election.

But conservatives denounce the idea as unconstitutional.

"All the Democrats who've tried for years to deny the gun confiscation motives behind their gun control pushes went — nooooooo," columnist Cheryl Chumley wrote in the right-leaning Washington Times. "There's the golden ticket the NRA, the Republican Party, the patriotic Second Amendment supporters of this country needed to prove their argument. ... Democrats want to confiscate guns, pure and simple."

O’Rourke’s stance quickly became a touchstone, with the potential to redirect campaigns at many levels.

In Texas’s growing field of Democrats jockeying for a shot at Sen. John Cornyn next year, one candidate gave O’Rourke an attaboy. The National Republican Senatorial Committee challenged other would-be nominees to take a stand one way or the other, hoping to smoke out comments to be used against them in the general election.

"What @BetoORourke said," wrote Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, retweeting an O'Rourke campaign tweet that read "Hell yes, we're gonna take your AR-15."

Pollster Angela Kuefler, who works with Giffords, said that as the issue becomes more personal for voters — as children return from school after lockdown drills and active shooter drills, and they see a “drumbeat of mass shootings” in their state and around the country — the willingness to ban assault-style weapons has grown, along with a desire for less contentious measures.

“Americans believe in the Second Amendment, but they do carve out an exception for semi-automatic assault weapons,” she said. “People believe that the Second Amendment protects your right to defend yourself and your family. They do not necessarily believe they need an AR-15 to do that.”