Would You Support Mandatory Gun Buybacks?

What’s the story?

• Former Texas Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke has proposed implementing a mandatory buyback program for assault weapons.
• “So we’re left with a choice. We can stick by what we’ve been doing — playing it safe, while we beg Mitch McConnell to take action on the floor of Congress. Or we can follow the lead of the students marching for their lives and for all of ours, who are demanding we do more to protect them,” the 2020 presidential candidate wrote in Teen Vogue last week. 

“I choose the kids. And the question I have for my fellow Democrats in this race and in Congress is: Do you?”

March For Our Lives forum

• “I heard some of the comments made today on this stage,” O’Rourke said Wednesday at a March For Our Lives forum in Las Vegas. “Those who are worried about the polls and want to triangulate—I’m thinking about Mayor Pete on this one,” he said, referring to Pete Buttigieg.
• "We have a way sometimes as a party ... of getting caught, just when we've amassed the discipline and the force to get something done right away, a shiny object makes it harder for us to focus," Buttigieg said when asked about the buybacks debate among 2020 Democrats.
• O'Rourke is the only candidate to sign on to the March for Our Live’s Peace Plan for a Safer America, which includes this statement:

“[W]e need to implement a federal gun buy-back program that facilitates compliance with new laws and provides economic incentives for gun owners to responsibly reduce their gun inventory. All government-purchased gun inventory would be destroyed. The intended goal: a reduction of our domestic firearm stock by at least 30%.”

What’s the Peace Plan for a Safer America?

What do you think?

Do you support a national gun buyback program? Take action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: Neon Tommy via Flickr)