Beto O’Rourke was still responding to questions about his bold remark about mandatory buybacks for automatic weapons at last week’s Democratic presidential debate when he visited San Quentin State Prison Wednesday.

‘It was a real honor to spend some time in San Quentin to meet with the leadership of the prison but also to meet with the inmates there,” O’Rourke said. “One of my big takeaways is, we are all capable of change.”

O’Rourke, who says he opposes the death penalty, spent about two hours touring the prison and talking to prison officials and inmates.

Asked why he wanted to tour San Quentin, O’Rourke said, “I’m running to be the president of everyone in the United States. I’m especially interested in listening to those who have never had a seat at the table, whose stories have never really been told. They’re every bit American as anyone else in this country. I have an obligation to listen to them.”

On Tuesday, he visited a women’s center on Skid Row in Los Angeles.

It wasn’t long, however, before O’Rourke, among the better known of the 20 individuals competing to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020, was asked to defend his comment about guns at last week’s debate.

“Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” O’Rourke said during the nationally televised debate.

“It’s so funny that so many of the questions are around the anxiety of offending the political order or handing the Republicans a talking point,” O’Rourke said, “instead of the anxiety being around the fact that kids are coming home from school right now thankful they’ve survived another day without a mass shooter walking into their classroom and killing them where they sit.”

O’Rourke said following mass killings in El Paso, Midland and Odessa in August, he has no doubt that AR-15s and AK-47s should be banned, and the nearly 15 million existing weapons “should be brought back home.”

On Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump tweeted, “Dummy Beto made it much harder to make a deal. Convinced many that Dems just want to take your guns away.”

Asked about the tweet, O’Rourke said, “I could care less what the president says on this; the judgment I fear most is that of young people who understand exactly what is happening, that we lose 40,000 lives a year in this country.”

O’Rourke was asked if he thought about his two arrests while he was touring the prison. In 1998 when he was 26, O’Rourke was arrested for drunken driving. According to a Houston Chronicle story, he lost control and hit a truck; one witness reported he attempted to leave the scene before police arrived.

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Opinion: Christians must fight Trump attempt to monopolize faith And in 1995, O’Rourke was arrested on a misdemeanor burglary charge after leaping a fence at the University of Texas-El Paso. Prosecutors dropped the case.

“It was never far from my mind,” O’Rourke said. “Neither of those defined me or determined my options in life or prevented me from starting a small business or running for president of the United States of America. That has a lot to do with my race, a function of luck, circumstance and privilege.”