Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Tuesday that Democratic presidential candidates would be setting the stage for another civil war if successful at banning semi-automatic guns.
The host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” made the claim during the latest episode of his cable prime-time program in response to White House hopeful Beto O’Rourke recently saying that his administration would require Americans gun owners to sell their so-called assault weapons to the government.
“Now you will hear propagandists, and you often do hear propagandists, describe that as a ’gun buyback.’ But that’s nonsense, of course,” Mr. Carlson said. “Americans didn’t buy their guns from the government in the first place. They’re not buying them back. This is gun confiscation. It’s nothing but that.”
“So, this is — what you’re calling for is civil war. What you’re calling for is an incitement to violence. It’s something that I wouldn’t want to live here when that happened, would you?” Mr. Carlson said later in the segment.
Mr. O’Rourke, a former Democratic congressman for Texas, recently spoke in support of banning certain guns following amid rash of deadly mass shootings, including a rampage last month inside a Walmart store in his hometown of El Paso.
Asked over the weekend to address fears that the federal government would confiscate legally purchased assault rifles if elected president, Mr. O’Rourke confirmed, “that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
“Americans who own AR-15s, AK-47s, will have to sell them to the government,” Mr. O’Rourke said Saturday.
Spokespeople for Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
“He’s going to confiscate firearms from tens of millions of law-abiding Americans whether it works or not, and he doesn’t care what you think about it,” Mr. Carlson said.
Virtually all Democratic candidates seeking the party’s nomination to compete next year against President Trump have endorsed various gun reform measures, ranging from banning semi-automatic rifles to enacting “red flag” laws that would block potentially dangerous people owning firearms.
Around two-thirds of registered U.S. voters supporting banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons, according to the results of a Fox News poll conducted in the aftermath of last month’s back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio. Conducted less than 24 hours apart, the rampages resulted in a combined 29 deaths and dozens of injuries.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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