Beto O'Rourke's response to the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, his hometown, was "meaningful," former Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday during the third Democratic presidential debate, a comment that elicited applause from the crowd in Houston.
"The way he handled what happened in his hometown is meaningful," Biden said about O’Rourke. "To look in the eyes of those people, to see those kids, to understand those parents, to understand the heartache, we are ready to do this."
O'Rourke left the campaign trail in August to return his hometown after a gunman opened fire at a Walmart there, killing 22 people and injuring 26.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., also praised O'Rourke.
"Beto, God, love you for standing so courageously in the face of that tragedy," she said.
O'Rourke has called for mandatory buybacks for some machine guns if elected president.
If a gun is meant to "kill people on a battlefield," he said, "hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15s, your AK-47s."
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