Las Vegas, NV — On Wednesday, activists with the March For Our Lives said while they want to assure gun owners they will be not coming for their firearm, they do want them to know the group will go after AR-15s and AK-47s.
David Hogg, co-founder of March For Our Lives, has previously stated his group is not going after legally owned guns.
"I think a lot of people that are out there that are fearing what we're saying right now think that we're going to try taking their guns, we're not," Hogg said in 2018. "The 'Never Again' movement and March For Our Lives is not trying to take your guns. We're trying to take back our lives."
Townhall asked Hogg and Ariel Hobbs, a student executive board member at March For Our Lives, how can they reconcile his previously made statements to the group's now-praise of former Rep. Beto O'Rourke's "hell yes" rallying call to confiscate AR-15s and AK-47s.
"When you talk to gun owners that use guns for sport, like hunting or different things, they understand that when we talk about removing AR-15s, that they don't need an AR-15 to hunt. You do not need an AR-15 to defend yourself. It's a weapon of war, that's just what it is," Hobbs said.
Hobbs said as long as there are AR-15s in communities, "then there is a chance that weapon of war will be used on someone, like how we've seen in multiple mass shooting in this country."
"And so, you have people that are afraid that they're coming to take their guns, and I completely understand that and we don't want to take their guns," she said, but said they do want to take AR-15s and similar types of rifles when asked to clarify their position.
At the same event, when asked if it is misleading to call AR-15s "weapons of war" since the U.S. military does not issue them, South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a Navy veteran, said, "The point is not the small differences in firing mechanisms or certain capabilities. The point is that they're weapons with destructive power that there is simply no justification for them to be in civilian hands."