CHARLES C.W. COOKE: Beto Is a Disaster for the Gun-Control Movement.

He almost certainly doesn’t realize it, but Beto O’Rourke is likely to be the worst thing to happen to the gun-control movement in decades — and, if he continues in this mode, he may turn out to be the worst thing to happen to the Democratic party in a long time, too. In Houston last night, O’Rourke abandoned his cloying euphemisms (“mandatory buybacks”) and delivered a deliberate, carefully scripted endorsement of gun confiscation, which, within minutes, his campaign began to sell on t-shirts. “Hell yes,” Beto said, “we’re going to take your AR-15.”
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​​Thus, upon the instant, did two decades’ worth of Democratic rhetoric go up in a puff of smoke.

“’That clip will be played for years at Second Amendment rallies,’ said Dem Sen. Chris Coons to CNN this morning of O’Rourke’s vow to confiscate assault weapons.”

Add that the Democrats’ “ban all the things” rhetoric at the CNN “climate change town hall” from last week, and it begs the question: what’s left that they don’t want to ban? (And Biden has signed off on his support for the Green New Deal. So much for his posing as the moderate among the candidates.) As Bryan Preston wrote afterwards, “If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela. Thank you, CNN, just for letting these people talk. Do it again next week? Please?”

Surprisingly, the House of Stephanopoulos was eager to comply.