Cory Booker distanced himself from Democratic presidential primary competitor Beto O’Rourke’s fiery rhetoric on confiscating assault-style rifles.
“My point is this — and I’m not where Beto is in the way he’s talking about this issue,” Booker, a New Jersey senator and Democratic presidential hopeful said on The View Tuesday when asked about his support for “mandatory buybacks.”
“Good, because he’s crazy,” co-host Meghan McCain responded.
Booker reprimanded McCain for her description of O’Rourke. “We should watch the way we talk about each other. Seriously, we can’t tear the character of people down,” he said.
Both presidential hopefuls support “mandatory buybacks” of assault-style weapons, but O’Rourke has been much more vocal about the policy. “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15’s, your AK-47’s,” the former Texas congressman said during a September Democratic primary debate.
Booker dismissed McCain’s question on how he would implement a policy to confiscate those weapons, instead directing attention to popular gun control measures like expanding background checks, outlawing the new sale of assault-style rifles, and requiring gun owners to obtain a license.
“We can find the evidence-based way to accomplish this as a country. Other countries have done it. We did it with machine guns. Why are we playing into fear-mongerers that want to make you this vision that there’s going be people showing up to your house and taking your guns away?” Booker said. “We have more people die in America in my lifetime than in every single war combined, and we’re having arguments that divide us? All Americans agree on gun licensing — 70%, 80% do, agree on background checks, we can do this.”
“I’m not going to let us be divided by false arguments. There are things we can do, that if I’m president of the United States, I will get done,” Booker said.
Earlier this month, Booker criticized primary competitor South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg for calling “mandatory buyback” proposals “gun confiscation.”
“Calling buyback programs ‘confiscation’ is doing the NRA’s work for them, @PeteButtigieg — and they don’t need our help,” Booker said in a tweet.
Booker in May unveiled a gun control policy platform that his campaign called the “most sweeping gun violence prevention plan ever put forth by a presidential candidate.” He was the first in the crowded Democratic presidential field to call for gun licensing, but the plan did not mention “mandatory buybacks.”
