“Hell, No!” to Beto 2.0

Remember “Beto” O’Rourke and his runs for political office, hellbent on gun control?  

Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, the former Democratic Texas U.S. Congressman, famously told the country during his failed presidential bid in 2019 that, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!” The commitment to mandatory confiscation of what he termed “assault” weapons, legitimately acquired and lawfully owned firearms, was the final banana peel that tripped up his campaign and weeks later, he dropped out of the race.

O’Rourke subsequently ran as the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Texas, and in a 2021 Texas Tribune article announcing his candidacy, he had the gall to criticize Governor Greg Abbott’s policies on firearms for being “extremist” and “divisive.” At the time, O’Rourke “said he won’t be backing down from his message on guns. He also said many Texans who support gun rights, regardless of party, agree that most people shouldn’t have access to assault rifles.” He subsequently flip-flopped between a complete 180-degree turn (“I’m not interested in taking anything from anyone. What I want to make sure that we do is defend the Second Amendment,” he told a rally in 2022) and returning to his original, extremist gun control rhetoric. He even found a conservative “gun owner” who was “completely sold” on Beto’s desire “to protect the Second Amendment,” but it was all for nothing and he lost to Republican Greg Abbott.

These days, Beto is still doubling down on gun control, with no regrets over his “extremely unpopular” “Hell, yes” statement. It’s hardly surprising to learn he is reportedly teaming up with another gun grabber, James Talarico, the Democratic state representative running for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas against the current Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton.

A recent Daily Caller article states that Everytown- and Giffords-endorsed Talarico has been holding strategy sessions with O’Rourke and Aimee Prudhomme, executive director of O’Rourke’s voter-registration group.

Voter outreach efforts to find “likely Democratic voters” include going after “drag show attendees, Mexico soccer fans,” and individuals “that are targets of voter suppression, likely to be removed or purged from the rolls come November” (which removal occurs, the article notes, upon incarceration for a felony conviction, being illegally present in the United States, being mentally incapacitated, moving out of Texas or the country, or upon the voter’s death). Unbelievably, at the same time as floating such voter-gathering proposals, O’Rourke gripes about the election “actively being rigged against Talarico by Republicans like President Donald Trump.”

Talarico’s campaign checks all of the boxes on gun control wish lists, including “passing commonsense gun safety laws,” establishing universal background checks for gun sales, “rais[ing] the age to purchase semi-automatic rifles with certain military-style features like high-capacity magazines,” and “opposing legislation allowing for the permitless carry of firearms in Texas.”

At a 2020 virtual town hall event, Talarico expounded on his views of the Second Amendment. He was “proud to take steps as a lawmaker…introducing gun safety legislation myself and always supporting any gun safety bill that came onto the floor of the House” (starting at 24:16).  Very few politicians, he said, “have actually read the Second Amendment because, if they did, they would know that the words ‘well regulated’ are right there in the text of the amendment itself, and so like any right we have in our Constitution it’s not unlimited and it’s not absolute… and we can put common sense restrictions and limitations on that right” (starting at 24:33). The reason, he claimed, that these “common sense” restrictions and limitations were not enacted despite broad bipartisan support was because “policymakers at the federal and state levels are beholden to the gun lobby and in particular the NRA” (starting at 25:14).

Talarico may have been a middle-school English teacher, but his reading comprehension is way off. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Heller and McDonald and Bruen, has saved him the trouble of puzzling the Second Amendment out for himself. Far from allowing the restriction of Second Amendment rights, the adjective “well regulated” applies to “militia,” the word immediately following, and means (as the U.S. Supreme Court explained in Heller), “nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training” in the context of securing an individual right to bear arms for defensive purposes, including citizens called to the common defense.

And speaking of common sense, the reason why these “common sense” restrictions and limitations have not been enacted is that voters have communicated, in the most obvious way possible, that they don’t care for pointless bureaucracy and unconstitutional, ineffective gun laws that burden only the law-abiding. 

We’ve said it before: Talarico is nothing more than Beto 2.0.

NRA-ILA Executive Director John Commerford describes Talarico as trying to “pose as a moderate” on the Second Amendment, while his platform is “the agenda of someone who fundamentally distrusts law-abiding gun owners and wants to turn the Second Amendment into a heavily regulated government privilege.”

While it may seem easy to dismiss Talarico’s foolish musings as a non-starter in gun-friendly, “come and take it” Texas, voters cannot afford to be complacent, given, in the words of one activist, the “main mission is to flip the state of Texas … so goes the state, so goes the country.” There are less than 100 days remaining before the November midterm elections. As for Talarico, we encourage him to heed Beto’s advice on campaign strategy … because Beto’s own history demonstrates he clearly has a finger on the pulse of Texas.