Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said during a Democratic Party convention on Saturday that stricter gun control measures must be introduced in the U.S., calling for a mandatory gun buyback program, a national firearms registry and red flag laws.
O’Rourke vowed to ban the sale of “weapons of war” and stressed that every U.S. citizen who wanted to purchase a firearm would have to first obtain a federal license to do so.
“This is a country that has produced the leadership that will ensure that we not only have universal background checks and red flag laws and end the sale of those weapons of war but that we go the necessary steps further as politically difficult as they may be,” he told the crowd.
O’Rourke further promised that if he became president, he would enforce a mandatory gun buyback, forcing gun owners to sell some firearms to federal authorities, Fox News reports.
“A gun registry in this country, licensing for every American who owns a firearm, and every single one of those AR-15s and AK-47s will be bought back so they’re not on our streets, not in our homes, [and] do not take the lives of our fellow Americans,” he said.
The former Texas representative’s comments echoed those he made earlier in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he outlined his proposed plan and how it would work.
“I want to be really clear that, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Americans who own AR-15s, AK-47s, will have to sell them to the government. We’re not going to allow them to stay on our streets, to show up in our communities, to be used against us in our synagogues, our churches, our mosques, our Walmarts, our public places,” he noted.
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