Texas State Representative Briscoe Cain is a passionate proponent of Second Amendment rights. After Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke vowed at the debate last night, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15,” referencing O’Rourke’s proposed mandatory gun buyback program, Cain tweeted out:
Beto didn’t like the tone of Cain’s threat.
This is a death threat, Representative. Clearly, you shouldn't own an AR-15—and neither should anyone else. pic.twitter.com/jsiZmwjMDs
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) September 13, 2019
Yes, it was a threat. Twitter removed Cain’s original tweet, citing its rule on “threats of violence.” And the O’Rourke campaign went even further. Guardian:
The O’Rourke campaign reported the tweet to the FBI, a campaign spokesperson told the Guardian. The campaign declined to offer any additional comment, including any response to Twitter’s decision to take down Cain’s original tweet.
Rep. Colin Allred, a freshman from suburban Dallas who flipped a Republican-held seat in 2018, calls such a move a worrying break from tradition, even as he supports a number of other new gun regulations.
“I don’t think that in our country we’re ever going to really go around having any kind of mandatory program like that,” he said.
The split among Democrats between dramatic action and practical politics has added a complicated wrinkle to the gun debate now roiling Washington and the campaign trail.
Some analysts are saying that the “Hell yes” comment on guns gave O’Rourke a “breakout moment.” In reality, it was the last gasp of a failing campaign.
Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate in Houston confirmed what we already knew: Beto O’Rourke needs to sit down, face reality, and drop out.
From the beginning of his presidential campaign, O’Rourke has come across as smug rather than substantive. A mediocre man and example of “white privilege” if there ever was one, the sheer audacity of his campaign launch was astounding: Imagine losing a Senate race, but thinking you somehow then deserve to become president. And in the now-famous Vanity Fair cover story in light of his campaign launch, O’Rourke said he “was born to be in it.”
Too bad he wasn’t born with any qualifications or talent. O’Rourke’s inadequacies have never been more clear than after the most recent ABC debate.
Within 10 seconds of opening his mouth for the first time, O’Rourke invoked the recent El Paso, Texas, mass shooting to exploit the tragedy to stump on gun control and reinvigorate his campaign, blaming it on President Trump, to boot. That’s right: His first order of business was to attempt to cash in on a massacre to score political points. Party affiliation aside, all sensible Americans know that such a shameless man ought not be president.
The issue of gun confiscation may or may not survive O’Rourke’s campaign. But one thing is clear: he isn’t the man to lead to revolution. He’s a cardboard cut-out of a candidate — an empty-headed, empty shell of a man with no breadth, no depth, and has been forced to fall back on barnyard epithets to get attention.
He didn’t deserve to be threatened. But the sooner he leaves the campaign, the better.
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