As former Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s (D-TX) impassioned debate declaration of, “hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47” was going viral on Thursday night, not all Democrats were punching the sky in solidarity.
Because while the audience in Houston clearly heard a battle cry, other Democrats heard at best a made-for-the-GOP attack ad and at worst a sentiment that threatens to undo the progress leaders have made towards reducing gun violence in the country.
“Don’t write the Republican ads for them,” Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left think tank Third Way, told The Daily Beast. “This is a real vulnerability.”
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Bennett was describing a simmering feeling of anxiety that appeared to emerge among gun reform activists and the party faithful on Friday morning, as new questions were raised about whether O’Rourke’s call for a mandatory buy back of assault-style weapons is the right path moving forward.
“We are for the first time as a gun violence prevention moment on the brink of victory,” Bennett said. “However, it is possible to go too far and shift the momentum back in the other direction and I think that’s the concern.”
Bennett’s concerns were echoed by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), a moderate Democrat, who was among the first to publicly reject O’Rourke’s idea. When asked by CNN host Poppy Harlow if he is supportive of a mandatory buyback program, the Delaware senator flatly said he was not.
“I frankly think 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,” Coons said. “I’m a gun owner. My sons and I have gone skeet shooting and hunting and, frankly, I don’t think having our presidential candidates, like Congressman O’Rourke did, say that we’re going to try and take people’s guns against their will is wise either.”
“Did he hurt the party?,” Harlow asked.
“We’ll have to see,” Coons responded.
Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the leading groups advocating for gun control and against gun violence, said they are focused on getting legislation passed through Congress when asked by The Daily Beast about their reaction to O’Rourke’s comments.
“It's hard to overstate how much the politics of gun safety has changed - whereas candidates once avoided gun safety entirely, now they're jockeying to be the boldest,” Taylor Maxwell, the group’s grassroots media director, said.
“We welcome all ideas to prevent gun violence, but our focus right now is on passing legislation that can save lives and get through the Senate.”
O’Rourke, who has realigned his campaign around the issue of gun violence following a pair of deadly mass shootings in the state of Texas, including in his hometown of El Paso, was asked during the three-hour debate whether he is proposing taking away guns and how it would work.
“If the high-impact, high-velocity round, when it hits your body, shreds everything inside of your body because it was designed to do that so that you would bleed to death on a battlefield ... when we see that being used against children," O'Rourke said on stage among his fellow Democratic rivals to loud applause.
The National Rifle Association and Republican operatives immediately clipped and circulated the video as proof that Democrats were going to take gun control to the constitutional limit and beyond. But before the debate even concluded, the idea that Republicans may benefit from O’Rourke’s strong rhetoric had been planted online.
In response, his campaign doubled down.
“Bring it. Beto's not afraid,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, O’Rourke’s campaign manager, tweeted in addressing a reporter’s suggestion that the former Texas congressman’s line would be used as a GOP attack.
O’Rourke himself repeated his pledge on Friday morning. Asked by CNN host Alisyn Camerota if he was worried his remarks would potentially halt Democrats’ future prospects in the 2020 general election, O'Rourke dismissed those concerns.
“It's not a concern of mine and that's in part informed by listening to people in conservative parts of America and the southwestern part of Virginia," he said. "The folks in Bland County, as conservative as it might be, as proud a gun owner as they might be, they're talking about this issue. And folks are saying, 'Look, I would give up that AR-15 or that AK-47. I don't need it to hunt, don't need it to defend myself in my home.' They recognize this is a weapon designed for war, to kill people as effectively, as efficiently, and in as great a number as possible.”
Americans are split on their support for a mandatory buyback program of assault-style weapons. A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that 46 percent of respondents are against Congress passing legislation for such a program and 45 percent are in favor. And the divide in support splits along partisan lines, with Republicans and independent voters opposing the idea.
That narrow divide might be the reason several national groups chose to tread lightly rather than weigh in one way or the other on O’Rourke’s proposal.
A spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, which is in charge of the debate criteria but remains neutral until the convention, stopped short of endorsing O’Rourke’s comments.
“Beto O’Rourke isn’t saying we’ll take all your guns. He’s specifically talking about AR-15s,” Xochitl Hinojosa, the DNC’s communications director, told CNN host Brianna Keilar on Friday afternoon.
When pressed, Hinojosa said that the DNC’s platform “doesn’t have his proposal specifically.”
“It does talk about the need to reduce gun violence,” she said.
O'Rourke's remarks on Thursday night came as he continues to make stricter gun control measures part of his 2020 campaign, most recently following a mass shooting in his hometown of El Paso, where 22 people were murdered at a Walmart in August.
In unveiling a proposal just weeks after the shooting occurred, O'Rourke called for the mandatory buyback of assault-style rifles, as well as a national gun registry, and a nationwide gun licensing system.
Giffords’ Executive Director Peter Ambler did not answer directly when asked about the group’s reaction to O’Rourke’s comments, but rather emphasized it as a “unifying issue” for Democrats.
“While Donald Trump continues to refuse to say what he'll do, those running against him vowed to fight for bold, common sense gun safety laws that will save lives,” Ambler said. “They committed to taking on the corrupt gun lobby that has choked off progress. What's more, they accurately portrayed the scope of the problem, the sheer number of lives hurt by gun violence, and how failure to act is not an option.”
