DENVER — With an AR-15 in hand, Colorado Congressman Ken Buck issued a challenge to Democrats: if you want his gun, come and get it.
Buck, the chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, posted a video with his message to Twitter on Friday.
“I have a message for Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke. If you want to take everyone’s AR-15 in America, why don’t you swing by my office in Washington, D.C. and start with this one?” he said as he removed the gun decorated with American flags from a display on his office wall. “Come and take it.”
Neither the state party nor Buck’s office responded to questions from 9NEWS about the video that shows him briefly swing the gun in the direction of the person recording, but a news release said the gun is unloaded and locked and that he had permission to display it in his Washington D.C. office.
"It is a beautiful, patriotic paperweight,” Buck told Reuters in 2015.
O'Rourke replied to Buck's tweet later on Friday.
"This guy makes the case for both an assault weapons ban and a mandatory buyback program better than I ever could," he said. "These are weapons of war that have no place in our communities, in our politics or in our public discourse."
O’Rourke is Buck’s former colleague in Congress and a previous Democratic presidential hopeful. He endorsed current candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden in O’Rourke’s home state of Texas earlier this week. O'Rourke named gun violence as a reason for the endorsement.
"Mr. Vice President, you also know that whether it was Sutherland Springs, or Santa Fe High School, or El Paso, Texas, at that Walmart last August, or Midland-Odessa in the same year, we understand the devastating toll of gun violence in America and in this state," O'Rourke told the crowd.
Biden responded, "You're going to take care of the gun problem with me. You're going to be the one who leads this effort. I'm counting on you."
The news release said Buck wanted to send a message to this "gun-grabbing duo."
O'Rourke also drew criticism from Buck in Friday's release for a comment he made about assault rifles last fall.
"Hell yes we are going to take your AR-15, your AK-47," O'Rourke told ABC News anchor David Muir.
Buck's video was posted a day after he called comments made by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) inappropriate and dangerous.
During an abortion rights rally on the day the U.S. Supreme Court heard an abortion rights case, Schumer name-dropped Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh and said they will pay the price.
The video is not the only national news Buck made this week.
On Wednesday, Buck was one of two members of Congress to vote no on the $8.3 billion COVID-19 emergency funding because he thought it included billions more than needed, with "vague plans on how the extra money would be spent."
That same day, Buck signed onto a request to the CDC and Health and Human Services, along with every other member of Colorado's Congressional delegation, for grant money for a coronavirus response.
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