The last of the Blue Dog Democrats in the Senate is not at all amused by 2020 Democratic primary candidate Beto O’Rourke’s proposal to forcibly confiscate AR-15 and AR-15-style rifles.
The way West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin tells it, the no-hope 2020 candidate is a bigmouth who is doing more than anyone to add to the perception that the Democratic Party is home to lunatic gun-grabbers.
“Beto is one human being. He gave his own opinion, OK? I think it was very harmful to make it look like all Democrats,” the senator told reporters Wednesday.
Manchin’s remarks are a direct response to O’Rourke’s big moment last Thursday. The former Texas congressman went for broke during a Democratic debate in Houston and announced his administration would absolutely come for Americans “weapons of war.”
“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,” O’Rourke said, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used on fellow Americans anymore.”
Moments later that evening, the former congressman’s team announced a new campaign T-shirt bearing the slogan, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15.”
Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15.
Buy your shirt now: https://t.co/kEJxoLvfH5 pic.twitter.com/KKpAKX4IL8
— Beto O’Rourke (@BetoORourke) September 13, 2019
The next day, Sen. Chris Coons, who has pushed hard for universal background checks, said in so many words that O’Rourke should probably stop talking.
“I’m a gun owner,” the Delaware senator told CNN. “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 a wise either policy or political move.”
Coons added of O’Rourke’s debate declaration, “[T]hat 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.”
The senator is not wrong. It is sort of amazing to see the 2020 presidential candidate stomp all over gun-control activists’ carefully constructed and oft-repeated claim that they are not “coming for” anyone’s firearm.
“I respect his passion,” Coons added. “Anyone who has had to sit with the parents of victims of gun violence, parents who have lost their children, as I have, after the Sandy Hook shooting, after the Tucson shooting, parents.”
He added, “So I respect what is motivating Congressman O’Rourke, but I don’t think as a policy position that’s going to stand muster.”
Manchin, for his part, had a slightly less polished response this week to the former congressman’s stated crusade to harness the power of the federal government to forcibly confiscate millions of AR-15 and AR-15-style firearms from Americans.
“I can tell you one thing: Beto O’Rourke’s not taking my guns away from me,” Manchin told reporters Wednesday. “You tell Beto that, OK?”
