(Politico)
DAVID SIDERS 08/16/2019 07:00 AM
Beto O’Rourke called Friday for gun licensing and a mandatory buyback program for assault weapons, expanding on a controversial gun control platform he advanced in his return to the presidential campaign the previous day.
Part of a proposal to address gun violence and white nationalism, O’Rourke said that, if enacted, anyone who failed to forfeit a banned assault weapon would be fined.
The mandatory buyback proposal goes further than most Democrats in the 2020 presidential field, though Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has suggested she supports such a program.
In addition to banning assault weapons and requiring their forfeiture, O’Rourke said he would work to implement a voluntary buyback program for handguns. He proposed increasing the excise tax on gun manufacturers and fines on gun traffickers to fund buybacks.
The proposal comes nearly two weeks after O’Rourke paused his campaign following a mass shooting at a Walmart in his hometown of El Paso, Texas. The former congressman returned to the campaign on Thursday with a blistering speech blaming President Donald Trump for instigating acts of racism and violence.
“I’m confident that if at this moment, we do not wake up to this threat," he said in a speech in El Paso, "then we as a country will die in our sleep.”
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