There was a bit of an inter-Texas political dust-up yesterday involving that state’s Senator That Wasn’t, namely, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, who took to the stage at his party’s interminable presidential debate in Houston to demand a mandatory national gun buyback program of the type which abjectly failed to make much of a dent in private gun ownership in Australia and New Zealand.

In Thursday’s debate, Mr. O’Rourke made it clear that he supports a mandatory federal buyback program for specific firearms following recent mass shootings in his home state of Texas.

“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” Mr. O’Rourke said. “We’re not going to allow it to be used against a fellow American anymore.”

The stunning ignorance of someone who purports to make federal policy on this issue and yet equates an AR-15 with an AK-47 is notable. As anyone with any knowledge of guns understands, an AR-15 is a rifle platform – in fact, the most popular rifle platform by sales in the entire country. An AR-15 is not an automatic rifle like an AK-47 is, and an AK-47 is, for the most part, illegal.

Well, let’s rephrase that. An AK-47 is legal to own. You just have a couple of steps you have to follow if you want one. All you have to do is pick out the gun, and make sure it was manufactured before the federal ban on manufacture or sale of new automatic weapons. Then pay the dealer $25,000 to $35,000. Then you’ll need to comply with the requirements of the National Firearms Act (NFA) by submitting your fingerprints and paying the $200 Federal transfer Tax. Following that comes a background check not dissimilar to that undergone by nominees for federal judgeships, and then a six-month wait for your BATF approval letter with tax stamp affixed.

And then you can have your rickety AK-47 which is more than 33 years old.

The stupidity and demagoguery of O’Rourke’s outburst at the debate was a bit more than Texas state representative Briscoe Cain was willing to stomach, so he popped off on Twitter…

Beto didn’t like that at all, and proceeded to go Full Snowflake over Cain’s riposte…

This is a death threat, Representative. Clearly, you shouldn't own an AR-15—and neither should anyone else. pic.twitter.com/jsiZmwjMDs

— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) September 13, 2019

So now explaining to an unmitigated twit that should he attempt to use violence to disarm the American people, who have a 2nd Amendment right to firearms ensconced in the Constitution O’Rourke proposes to take an oath to uphold (and has already done when he took office as a congressman), he would defend himself…that’s a death threat.

Not only is this logically asinine, it’s also legally defective. O’Rourke ought to know about the Supreme Court case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, a 1969 Supreme Court case which directly addresses such a situation. In that case the Court said that the government cannot constitutionally punish abstract advocacy of force or law violation unless it is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.

Essentially telling O’Rourke “Come and take it” does not reach that standard.

This is the kind of moronic rhetoric which comes out of O’Rourke’s mouth on a regular basis, and it’s disqualifying in the extreme. He lacks the temperament to serve in any public office, much less the White House, and he constitutes a dire threat to our civil liberties. That almost 49 percent of Texans were willing to put this entitled troglodyte into the U.S. Senate is frightening, and that some $85 million was spent in that endeavor is worse.

Thankfully, the sands in the hourglass of O’Rourke’s political career are draining out quickly and he’ll be gone from the presidential race, and much of anything else in the foreseeable future, very soon. That will make America a better place – we’re overdue to rid ourselves of wannabe tyrants lacking any intellectual heft from our electorate process.