Tipsheet

Biden's Pick for Deputy Chief of Staff Hawked Beto's AR-15 Confiscation Plan

Jen O’Malley Dillon, Joe Biden's pick to be his deputy chief of staff, used to work on former Congressman Beto O'Rourke's (D) failed presidential campaign and went into further detail about his AR-15 confiscation plan.

During a Democratic primary debate in 2019, O'Rourke infamously declared, "Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!" to a rousing applause from the audience. 

In a video posted after his comment, Dillon touted how O'Rourke's campaign was the only campaign that had such an extreme measure.

"We are actually the only campaign with a plan...but a plan that supports mandatory buybacks of weapons of war. The assault weapon ban is very, very important and we need to have it, but that only takes weapons of war off the streets in the future, it does nothing for weapons of war that are currently out there," Dillon said.

After estimating there were around 15-16 million AR-15s already in American hands, Dillon then said O'Rourke's campaign was the only campaign that had endorsed the March for Our Lives "Peace Plan," which included a call to confiscate AR-15s.

When O'Rourke was pushed on the situation where Americans would resist confiscation of AR-15s, he admitted police would need to be involved to take the rifles away.

After being endorsed by O'Rourke, Biden said he plans on appointing him to be his gun control czar.