Beto O’Rourke’s Moment of Truth
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The dashing of Beto O’Rourke’s presidential hopes can be traced, in our estimation, to one moment of truth. It wasn’t his tendency to flap his arms, say, or his radical green agenda or his claim that he was born to be in the political fray, unconvincing as all those might be. It was his vow after the mass shooting at El Paso. “Hell, yes,” he shouted during the Democratic debate in Houston, “we’re going to take your AR-15.”
It happens that we were watching the debate live when Mr. O’Rourke erupted with that threat. We exclaimed immediately that he would have to drop out. It’s not that the erstwhile congressman wasn’t eloquent in respect of the mass shooting a month earlier, when a white supremist gunman slew 22 persons at Walmart. The killings were all the more horrifying because the perpetrator appeared to have a hatred of Latinos.
Yet it was instantly clear that Mr. O’Rourke’s remark would be understood as an attack on the rights of his fellow Americans. And that Mr. O’Rourke had lost his self control; he’d plunged over a constitutional line of which Democrats had tried to stay clear. It’s not that he was emotional. He, and millions of others, had good reason to be emotional. It was that he had failed to maintain a clear head.
Nor was it just Mr. O’Rourke’s own views. When the Texan declared “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15,” the audience in Houston erupted in applause. He had managed to pull back the curtain to disclose a party that seethes with enthusiasm for skirting the Second Amendment and seizing treasured weapons from, by some estimates, as many as 5 million law-abiding Americans. It was a campaign ending error.
That’s something for the rest of the Democratic field to keep in mind as the presidential campaign moves into high gear. We wouldn’t suggest that no advocate of gun control can win the presidency of America. President Obama is a fan of gun control; he won twice. It’ll be harder for such Democrats now, though, owing to the cat that was let out of the bag by Beto O’Rourke. Hell, yes.