Beto O'Rourke: As president, I'd institute a mandatory buyback of assault weapons

On Aug. 3, my hometown of El Paso, Texas — one of the safest cities in America — was attacked in one of the deadliest mass shootings in our country’s modern history. This was an act of white nationalist terror, and one we could have prevented.

All countries have video games. All countries struggle with mental health. All countries deal with hatred. But only America has more guns than human beings — 390 million firearms in a country of 329 million people — which kill nearly 40,000 people every year.

Some of the nurses, surgeons and doctors heroically treating victims at Del Sol and University Medical Center in El Paso told me they hadn’t seen such horrific wounds since they were deployed abroad in our armed forces, saving the lives of soldiers on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.

When the killer’s mother heard he had ordered an “AK”-type firearm, she wondered why her son, who was not enlisted in the military, needed a weapon like that. She was asking on behalf of herself, on behalf of her son, and on behalf of our country.

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/08/22/beto-orourke-president-institute-mandatory-assault-weapons-buyback-editorials-debates/2089652001/