Rep. Vicente González told CNN he does not know if presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s plan to confiscate AR-15s and AK-47s will stop mass shooting across the country.
The Texas Democrat told CNN on Monday that while he has great respect for O’Rourke, he thinks there are better options to look at before gun confiscation.
“I don’t know if we need to go that far to cure the issue, but certainly doing intense background checks, cutting loopholes. I just recently bought a shotgun at a gun show, and the lady just looked at my driver’s license and handed me the gun. Certainly something’s wrong with that,” Gonzalez said, floating universal background checks and limiting magazine capacity as alternatives.
“If you think back in the 70s and 80s, many of these guns were as available as they are now, but we weren’t having these mass shootings that we have today. So I think we need to really ask ourselves the question of what has socially brought us to this point in history, and what have we done, and what can we do differently to change society?” he continued. “That’s certainly a question that needs to be continued to [be] ask[ed], because I don’t know that taking everyone’s guns, and buying everybody’s guns back, is going to cure the national massacres that we’ve had in recent history.”
Anchor Poppy Harlow followed up by asking if O’Rourke’s confiscation plan will at least save lives.
“I’m not sure. That’s what I’m saying, we don’t know. It may be a social issue that needs to be addressed that hasn’t been. Maybe an intense social study of what’s happened in America in the last two decades that has brought us to this point in history where we’re having mass shootings almost every single month. Clearly, if buying guns back, I think, that should be the last resort,” he said.
Gonzalez’s remarks echo those of figures like former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who argued that mass shootings are manifestations of spiritual problems, and Archbishop of Philadelphia Charles J. Chaput, who said “only a fool” would believe gun control can solve mass violence.
In a shift from when he ran for the Senate in Texas, O’Rourke called for confiscating AR-15s and AK-47s during the third Democratic presidential debate. O’Rourke said he believes American gun owners will follow the law and turn them in, but if not, they will be fined to “compel” them to do so.
