Remember Beto O'Rourke? I know it's hard but he was that guy who ran against Sen. Ted Cruz (R) and lost who then ran for president and also failed at that. One of the contributing factors to each of those losses was his extreme stance on gun control where he proudly declared, more than once, he wanted to confiscate commonly-owned rifles from law-abiding citizens.
Now O'Rourke is running for governor in Texas where he is now saying he does not want to confiscate AR-15s, AK-47s, and the like from American citizens.
"I’m not interested in taking anything from anyone. What I want to make sure that we do is defend the Second Amendment,” he said during a recent campaign stop, according to KLTV. "I want to make sure that we protect our fellow Texans far better than we’re doing right now. And that we listen to law enforcement, which Greg Abbott refused to do. He turned his back on them when he signed that permitless carry bill that endangers the lives of law enforcement in a state that’s seen more cops and sheriff’s deputies gunned down than in any other."
Keep in mind, O'Rourke is not flip-flopping on comments he made during his 2020 presidential campaign, he's supposedly changing his stance from when he first announced his gubernatorial campaign last November.
"I think most Texans can agree — maybe all Texans can agree — that we should not see our friends, our family members, our neighbors, shot up with weapons that were originally designed for use on a battlefield," O’Rourke told the Texas Tribune at the time.
As Stephen Gutowski at The Reload points out, O'Rourke most likely changed his rhetoric because — shockingly — the talk of gun confiscation in Texas is not popular with voters:
"He is trailing Abbott by 8.2 points in the Real Clear Politics average, and the most recent poll from The Dallas Morning News has him down by 11 points. Some of this gap appears to be driven by O’Rourke’s support for gun confiscation as a December Quinnipiac University poll found 60 percent of voters felt Greg Abbott would handle gun policy better, while only 33 percent said the same of O’Rourke."