WASHINGTON — Beto O’Rourke’s most memorable comment in the 2020 presidential campaign will haunt him if he runs for Texas governor. Second Amendment advocates will make sure of it.

“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” he declared a few weeks after a gunman killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, which had sent O’Rourke to Congress three times.

By the time that debate ended, his campaign was selling T-shirts featuring the promise.

He was so forceful and unyielding that gun-control advocates cringed, fearing that wary gun-owners would conclude that, in their hearts, Democrats are gun-grabbers and that even modest restrictions are a prelude to confiscation.

“That is going to follow him for the rest of his life,” said Andi Turner, legislative director for the Texas State Rifle Association. “He didn’t just say it once … and most Texans, they have internet. Hell yes, it’s going to follow him. Texans who believe in the Constitution and the Second Amendment specifically are not going to tolerate gun confiscation from law-abiding citizens.”

It wasn’t the first or last time O’Rourke demanded mandatory buybacks of assault-style weapons.

But it was the most colorful — so colorful that Second Amendment defenders and advocates of gun violence reduction alike are scratching their heads as to how he can possibly get past it. And the consensus is that he must, to have any chance against Gov. Greg Abbott.

Because while mandatory buybacks polled pretty well among Democrats in fall 2019, after a summer of mass shootings, no one sees confiscation of guns purchased legally and owned by noncriminals as a winner in a Texas election.

“He’s got to find a better way to talk about this,” said Harold Cook, a longtime Democratic strategist in Austin. “If you’re gaining more enemies than you’re making friends, you’re not really doing politics very well.”

For anyone who thought the comment could be forgotten, the Abbott campaign burst that bubble on Thursday with a cartoon-style video showing O’Rourke driving off a cliff after driving past one yellow warning sign after another.

One says “CONFISCATE YOUR GUNS” as his “hell yes” comment plays on the car radio.

The Democrat has no formal campaign operation that would respond. Allies shrug off the premise behind such attacks.

“The people who are going to listen to that and automatically say I’m never going to vote for Beto O’Rourke were never going to vote for Beto O’Rourke,” said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat.

“This is somebody who would buy everybody a bazooka if he thought it would win him a few more votes over Allen West,” he added, alluding to the governor’s sharp right turn this year to inoculate himself in the primary against conservative challengers West and Don Huffines.

If O’Rourke does want to distance himself from “hell yes,” there aren’t many options. And each has tradeoffs:

Option 1: Backpedal

He didn’t call for mandatory buybacks as a congressman, or in the 2018 Senate race against Ted Cruz. If he walks it back now, he risks looking either insincere or fickle.

“When you’re that explicit with a position, it’s very difficult to explain it to voters in a way that’s not just saying, ‘I changed my mind,’ or ‘I lied before,’” said Joanna Rodriguez, deputy communications director at the Republican Governors Association, which backs Abbott for a third term.

“I think he showed his true colors during the presidential [race in 2020], when he was no longer put into that box of what was expected of him as a Texas candidate,” she said. If he tries to roll out “Beto 3.0 … people are going to wonder which version of him is the real one, and which version of him they’d get if he was elected.”

O’Rourke’s challenge is that he didn’t just promote mandatory buybacks at a single debate in September 2019 in Houston.

His campaign created an online petition. He promoted the idea before and after the debate, inflaming gun owners by making clear that he envisioned police visiting homes to pry loose contraband weapons.

“Just as in any law that is not followed or flagrantly abused, there have to be consequences or else there is no respect for the law,” he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “So, in that case, there would be a visit by law enforcement to recover that firearm … so that it cannot be potentially used against somebody else.”

And he’s continued to stand by it in recent months.

Option 2: New job description

O’Rourke could emphasize that he was running for the White House at the time.

A governor’s authority is narrower, so he’s shelving an idea that hinged on nationwide enforcement, because even if Texas cracks down on AR-15s, “you can just go across the border into Oklahoma,” Cook pointed out.

“It’s an entirely different focus if you’re a governor than if you’re a president,” Cook said.

That should buy good will in the “big, big center, where most voters are completely open to a lot of gun safety issues,” Cook said. “I don’t think a whole bunch of them would be on board with people confiscating your personal property. But there are a lot of things you can do reasonably, which are legal and constitutional and actually achievable.”

Option 3: Heat of the moment defense

O’Rourke could plead distress. This was only a few weeks since the Walmart massacre in his beloved hometown, after all.

But that could raise questions about his steadiness in a crisis.

“He just spoke from the heart and his heart was full of anger and rage at that moment,” said Liz Hanks, a real estate attorney in Houston and state legislative lead for Moms Demand Action. “Who knows what you’re going to say when you’re confronted with that scene, and somebody sticks a microphone in your face and you’ve been fighting this battle and fighting this battle and nobody will listen,” she said.

The group is an affiliate of Everytown for Gun Safety, which is backed by billionaire and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Neither pushes for mandatory buybacks.

“But we do say that when you see these mass shootings, it’s almost always an AR-15,” Hanks said. “I don’t think anybody wants to feel like the government is going to come and take away your guns.”

She views claims that O’Rourke is radical on guns as disingenuous, a way to hobble a forceful advocate for common-sense steps to curb violence and reduce access to guns that can kill many people quickly — weapons with capabilities far beyond those needed for either self-defense or hunting.

“They don’t want him to succeed,” Hanks said. “That side wants basically no regulation on guns whatsoever.”

Few echoed O’Rourke

Only two other major Democratic presidential contenders echoed O’Rourke’s call for mandatory buybacks: Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, now the vice president. The rest promoted voluntary buybacks that didn’t smack so much of confiscation.

Gun-control groups such as Giffords all but pleaded with candidates to shun the idea, warning it would make it harder to expand background checks and adopt other measures with broader appeal.

The NRA called O’Rourke the “AR-15 salesman of the month.”

President Donald Trump called him a “dummy” who “convinced many that Dems just want to take your guns away.”

Joe Biden, now president, distanced himself from mandatory buybacks, though when he collected O’Rourke’s endorsement in Dallas on the eve of Super Tuesday, he told O’Rourke as the crowd at Gilley’s honky tonk cheered: “You’re going to take care of the gun problem with me. You’re going to be the one who leads this effort. I’m counting on you.”

That drew allegations he’d become a gun-grabber, too, and Biden never did end up hiring O’Rourke as gun czar or in any other capacity.

Risk of backing away

When asked in recent months, he’s passed up multiple opportunities to repudiate his calls for mandatory buybacks.

“I know saying that uncomfortable truth that we shouldn’t have weapons of war that can fire 30 rounds in three seconds, that can kill 23 people in a Walmart in a matter of minutes, and that continue to pose a threat to Americans everywhere — I know saying that is the right thing to do, and the consequences, be they what they may,” he told KTVT-TV (Ch. 11) in June when asked if the “hell yes” comment would haunt him in a statewide run.

Last month at the Texas Tribune Festival, O’Rourke again opted against a pivot.

“We’ve got to prioritize the lives of our fellow Americans,” he said, noting that the El Paso killer used an AK-47 and linking that attack to the pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol trying to overturn the election.

“We are allowing political terrorists to arm themselves to the teeth,” he said.

Castro predicted it’s just one of many topics a campaign will sort out, and the more central questions center on Abbott — his failures with COVID-19 and the state’s power grid, a six-week abortion ban that “puts bounties on women and doctors,” and gun policies that undermine public safety.

“After 23 people got killed in El Paso because they’re Hispanic Texans,” Castro said, “he promised to take action and did nothing. In fact, he made the state more dangerous, by making it easier for people to walk around with a gun with no training, and no permit.”

Would violence prevention activists be disappointed if O’Rourke backs away from the “hell yes” promise?

“If somebody asked us to be the lead on confiscating guns — no, we wouldn’t,” said Gyl Switzer, executive director of Texas Gun Sense.

“Every solution should be on the table,” she said.

But realistically, she said, “if you’re taking the temperature of Texas when it comes to guns,” mandatory buybacks have no chance in Austin, where the GOP-controlled Legislature just delivered so many wins to the gun lobby, including permitless carry.

“We tend to talk about issues that will work in Texas. And I don’t think removing guns from anyone would be something that could happen in Texas,” she said.