By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
Democrat Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke’s promise to confiscate semi-auto sporting rifles if he is elected has ignited a firestorm. (Screen snip, YouTube, ABC News)
Democratic presidential candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke ignited a tempest with an outburst during the Sept. 12 Democratic debate that erased any notion of the party being rational on Second Amendment issues, and he elicited a sharp rebuke from a leading gun rights organization.
O’Rourke’s on-stage admission that his gun control plan revolved around confiscation of modern sporting rifles sparked outrage among gun owners. Even more alarming for Second Amendment advocates may have been the cheering audience.
After mentioning recent mass shootings and erroneously proclaiming modern sporting rifles to be “weapons of war,” O’Rourke declared, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!”
In a sharply-worded reaction, Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, stated, “O’Rourke’s comment was brutally revealing and so was the reaction from the audience. His intent to confiscate privately-owned firearms got the biggest cheer of the evening. Even more alarming was the fact that not one of his colleagues on stage made an effort to disagree. That should concern every gun owner in the country.
“Thanks to O’Rourke,” Gottlieb added, “Democrats have just graduated from being the ‘party of gun control’ to officially being the ‘party of gun confiscation,’ and nobody in the firearms community is going to forget that.”
Conservative personality Tomi Lahren of “Fox Nation,” appearing early Friday on “Fox and Friends” at Fox News, declared, “Finally they’re being transparent. We have been saying for years that they want to take our guns and it was always just, ‘Oh you stupid hillbillies, we don’t want to take your guns.’ And now they’re coming out and saying it proudly.”
On Facebook, firearms industry veteran Val Forgett has launched a discussion by noting, “For years we, legal, responsible gun owners, have tolerated the accusations and the vitriol directed at us because we are polite, we are law abiding and we believe in ALL the amendments, including the 1st, no matter how ill-informed and incorrect our accusers are about firearms, how they operate, and how they are sold.
“I purchased and own my guns legally,” Forgett continued. “I have committed no crimes; I have a constitutional right to own them. The Government is not taking them, period. I will not submit. We will not submit.”
Within hours, T-shirts were on sale online with O’Rourke’s message silk screened in letters big enough to see from a block away.
Writing at the Washington Times, Cheryl Crumley noted, “And with that, all the Democrats who’ve tried for years to deny the gun confiscation motives behind their gun control pushes went — nooooooo. It doesn’t get any clearer than that, does it? ‘Hell yes,’ we’re going to take your guns.”
O’Rourke’s remark galvanized gun rights activists. The former congressman’s comment became the headline story, overshadowing every other aspect of the third Democratic debate. O’Rourke grabbed the spotlight with his stunning comment, which Gottlieb and others say has stripped away any façade of reasonableness about gun rights from Democrats.
By no small coincidence, just days before O’Rourke’s diatribe on national television, Gottlieb had observed that, “Democrats don’t get it” about gun control.
“So far,” Gottlieb he said, “all Democrats have accomplished with their gun prohibition agenda is increase gun sales by 15 percent over the last month. This happens every time they introduce or pass new restrictions. They just don’t get it.
“Their attack on Second Amendment rights is really going to increase gun owner voter turnout in the 2020 elections,” he predicted. “The more extreme anti-gunners get with their bans and restrictions, the more they telegraph that they have no respect for our Constitutional Second Amendment rights.”
It is possible that prediction is going to come true sooner than anticipated. It is also likely that the Second Amendment community is not going to let any Democrat running for Congress dance around the issue. The party’s failure to admonish O’Rourke speaks volumes, Gottlieb indicated.
“Obviously,” he said, “O’Rourke’s party is no longer interested in piecemeal erosion of the Second Amendment. Their intent now is to smash it. How can Democrats expect any gun owner to believe otherwise unless the party, especially the other candidates, immediately disavow and condemn O’Rourke’s remark? Their silence is both deafening, and damning.”
