Democratic presidential candidate and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke expressed openness to a mandatory gun buyback program in America, similar to the one instituted in Australia, he said on the podcast “Pod Save America.”
O’Rourke, who has in the past expressed a desire to remove AR-15s from public possession and use, made the comment after the mass murders in El Paso, Texas. and Dayton, Ohio, over the weekend.
“Yes, and I’m open to them right now as a candidate,” O’Rourke said. “It absolutely has to be part of the conversation. If at the end of the day it’s going to save lives, if it’s going to prevent the kind of tragedies that we saw in El Paso or Gilroy or Dayton or this weekend in Chicago or all over this country on a daily basis, then let’s move forward and do it.”
O’Rourke was referring to the National Firearms Agreement, passed in Australia in 1996. The law banned the possession of shotguns and semi-automatic rifles in all but “exceptional circumstances.” – READ MORE