I thought I heard a faint sound coming from the west this morning as I was letting the chickens out of their coop. It sounded like a million voices rising up and yelling “Come and take it,” and now I know why. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke is running to be the next governor of Texas, and he’s still vowing to ban and confiscate the legally-owned and lawfully purchased AR-15s in the hands of Texas gun owners.

Abbott has already been campaigning against O’Rourke as too liberal for Texas, branding him “Wrong Way O’Rourke” and seizing on multiple positions he has taken since last running statewide. At the top of the list is O’Rourke’s proposal to require buybacks of assault weapons during his presidential campaign. That led to a memorable moment on the debate stage in which O’Rourke proclaimed that, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”

O’Rourke said he was not backing away from that proposal in his latest campaign.

“I think most Texans can agree — maybe all Texans can agree — that we should not see our friends, our family members, our neighbors, shot up with weapons that were originally designed for use on a battlefield,” said O’Rourke, whose hometown of El Paso was the site of an anti-Latino mass shooting in 2019 by a gunman who killed 23 people.

The gubernatorial race marks O’Rourke’s third campaign in as many election cycles — and it is unfolding in a much different context than his first statewide run three years ago. He is now well-known to Texas voters, and polls show more voters have a negative opinion of him than a positive one. The national environment is also working against him this time, with President Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat, deeply unpopular in Texas.

While Abbott’s approval rating has sunk to its lowest levels since he first became governor in 2014, O’Rourke starts as an underdog. The latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll found O’Rourke trailing Abbott by 9 percentage points.

In theory Abbott’s longevity could work against him in an environment where voters are deeply unhappy with the status quo, but the 2022 elections will also be a referendum on Democrats in D.C. and the Biden administration, and I have a feeling that Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke isn’t going to be riding a blue wave next November. Then there’s the fact that, as the Texas Tribune points out, O’Rourke is already unpopular with Texas voters, who’ve had plenty of chances to get to know him better over the past few years, and O’Rourke’s decision to double down on his gun banning ways won’t do him any favors with an electorate that has bought an awful lot of them in the past 20 months or so.

Which is not to say that Texans concerned about their 2A rights should be complacent. O’Rourke came close enough to beating Ted Cruz in 2018, and Abbott’s popularity has declined enough that Democrats will likely focus a lot of time and energy on boosting Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke’s chances next year. Gun owners need to get engaged, become involved, and most of all VOTE next November to ensure that O’Rourke’s dreams of enacting gun confiscation don’t come to fruition.