Beto O’Rourke has decided to hold himself up as the designated whipping boy for gun rights advocates. The man has no shot in hell of becoming president, but he’s still trying to push a radical brand of gun control that even Pete Buttigieg has called him down over.

However, O’Rourke apparently lives in a world of self-delusion. He continues to claim that gun owners are coming up to him and saying he’s right.

“Using guns to hunt or for self-defense makes a lot of sense to us here in Texas,” O’Rourke, a former three-term congressman from the state, said during an interview on MSNBC.

“But even from those Texans who own AR-15s, they’ve told me this themselves: ‘I don’t need this. I don’t need it to hunt. I don’t need it to protect myself. It was fun to use. I like taking it out to the range, but if giving this back or cutting it to pieces or selling it to the government helps to keep us safer, then by all means let’s do it,’” he said.

O’Rourke’s remarks come after the former congressman — who has pushed for a mandatory gun buyback program for assault-style weapons — defended his proposal during Thursday’s Democratic primary debate in Houston.

Of course, anyone with even passing familiarity with Texan gun owners chalked this up under, “I’ll take ‘Crap That Didn’t Happen’ for $100, Alex.”

The problem is, maybe it’s happening. Maybe a lot of AR-15 owners have decided that they don’t “need” their guns anymore and are willing to take part in a mandatory buyback should O’Rourke win. After all, we do see polling numbers that show more than half off all people support an assault weapon ban. Maybe some of those are also those who own those very same firearms.

Or, and here me out, O’Rourke is just outright lying about it.

You see, a different report suggests that a lot of people in Texas find O’Rourke’s comments concerning.

“There’s been people coming in here pretty upset about it saying they’re never going to get their firearms. Peoples first reaction is to blame the machine not the person,” said Logan Green, owner of ‘Ark-La-Tex’ gun sales in Gilmer.

Second amendment supporters are concerned that even the hint of confiscation could open a door that may never close.

“For the second amendment to be taken way, means any right can be taken away. And once you start chipping away at one, the rest can go just as fast,” said gun shopper Cory Dodd.

…

“If we don’t stand for what we believe in now our kids-kids may not get to experience the same freedoms we’ve experienced,” Dodd says.

And they have an answer for [O’Rourke’s] statement.

“That’s never gonna happen,” Green says.

Now, it’s possible that a couple of people who say they have AR-15s told O’Rourke just what he wanted to know, but I doubt it. Especially considering how they worded it. “I like taking it out to the range, but if giving this back or cutting it to pieces or selling it to the government helps to keep us safer, then by all means let’s do it,” is the way an anti-gunner would phrase something like this. Most gun owners know damn good and well their gun isn’t an issue. It’s locked in their gun safe or secured wherever it is and isn’t going to hurt anyone. Besides, we know that it’s the individual that is the problem, not the firearm.

So, O’Rourke is likely making crap up to make it sound like his ideas are something other than radical nonsense that the Democrats would rather he have kept his pathetic trap shut over.

Texas gun owners aren’t flocking to tell him any such thing. They’re just like the rest of us, disgusted at his comments while also recognizing that he’s really just the first Democrat to be stupid enough to say what we all knew to be true.