Presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke expressed interest in implementing mandatory gun confiscation through a gun buyback program similar to the one Australia did after a mass shooting in the 1990s.
O’Rourke said he was open to the idea when Jon Favreau asked him about it, who is a former top staffer for President Barack Obama and co-founder of Pod Save America.
“It absolutely has to be part of the conversation,” O’Rourke said. “And at the end of the day, if it’s going to save lives, if it’s going to prevent the kinds of tragedies that we saw in El Paso, Gilroy, and Dayton, or this weekend in Chicago or all over this country on a daily basis, then let’s move forward and do it.”
The former El Paso congressman explained that while Texas is a heavy firearm owning state, “gun owners, Republicans, non-gun owners, Democrats, independents, everyone — people want to make sure that their kids are okay, that their families are safe,” so he absolutely is open to the idea.
The El Paso mass shooting death toll reached 22 on Monday and was shortly followed by another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, in which nine were killed.
After a mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, that left 35 people dead in 1996, Australia swiftly banned automatic and semiautomatic rifles and shotguns. The government then held mandatory gun buybacks for the banned weapons.
In one year, Australia bought around 650,000 firearms from private citizens, which is estimated to be about 20% of the country’s privately owned guns, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
