Former Texas Congressman and perennial candidate for political office Beto O’Rourke is of two minds about guns.
At least two minds.
O’Rourke is unable to articulate what he thinks about private ownership of AR-15s. In the past, he’s wanted to reduce the number of AR-15 rifles “on our streets.” Other times, he wants to ban them altogether.
His position on AR-15s has changed again. Prior to the Uvalde tragedy, O’Rourke’s campaign website claimed the candidate wanted to “reduce” the number of AR-15s in America. After the shooting, O’Rourke now says no civilian should own the weapon.
The Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine shows that as recently as April 1, the “Gun safety” page included a section that said: “And while it might not be the easy or politically safe thing to say, I strongly believe that we need to reduce the number of AR-15’s and AK-47’s on our streets.”
Sometime since April 1 (the most recent date archived), the campaign edited the section to say: “And while it might not be the easy or politically safe thing to say, I don’t believe any civilian should own an AR-15 or AK-47.”
O’Rourke had previously dialed back his aggressiveness on gun control after falling behind incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in the polls.
Indeed, most politicians are a lot better at disguising their flip-flops than O’Rourke, who apparently believes that grandiose stunts like crashing a press briefing by his opponent Gov. Greg Abbott and screaming at him that he was “doing nothing” is a substitute for more intelligent action like, you know, thinking or something.
As O’Rourke knew, that stunt made him a hero on the left. As far as adding to the very serious conversation of proposing things that can be done that would actually help prevent tragedies, O’Rourke — and every other left-wing hysteric — has come up short.
When running for president in 2019, O’Rourke expressed support banning the sale of AR-15s and seizing the guns from current owners, saying: “Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15.” O’Rourke stood by that position as recently as November 2021.
But in February, O’Rourke took a more moderate stance. “I’m not interested in taking anything from anyone. What I want to make sure that we do is defend the Second Amendment. I want to make sure that we protect our fellow Texans far better than we’re doing right now,” he told reporters.
That’s not exactly what he said in 2018 when running for the Senate against Ted Cruz.
“We support the Second Amendment, if you own a gun keep that gun,” O’Rourke said then. “No one wants to take it away from you, at least I don’t.”
O’Rourke is not going to be elected governor of Texas. The only question is how badly Abbott humiliates him. If Beto goes into a full-on gun-grabber mode during the campaign, he will get a lot of national attention and lose.
But 2024 isn’t far off. “Beto in ’24” might sound pretty good right now.
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