Beto O’Rourke’s vow during the third round of Democratic presidential debates “to take your AR-15, your AK-47” if elected president appears to be a direct reversal of his stance last year.

The former Texas congressman shared an emotional anecdote about children who were killed by a mass shooter in Odessa, Texas, on Sept. 1.

When asked by ABC’s “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir about whether he was proposing “taking guns” away from legal gun owners, O’Rourke said he was – particularly guns “designed to kill people on the battlefield.”

“When we see that being used against children and in Odessa, I met the mother of a 15-year-old girl who was shot by an AR-15. And that mother watched her bleed to death over the course of an hour because so many other people were shot by that AR-15 in Odessa and Midland,” he said.

“There weren’t enough ambulances to get to them in time,” he said, then vowed, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore!”

But as a Senate candidate in April 2018, O’Rourke struck a different tone during an interview on “The Chad Hasty Show,” whose host asked: “I own an AR-15. A lot of our listeners out there own AR-15s. Why should they not have one?”

“To be clear, they should have them,” O’Rourke responded, according to Fox News. “If you purchased that AR-15, if you own it, keep it. Continue to use it responsibly.”

He added: “If you own a gun, keep that gun. Nobody wants to take it away from you — at least I don’t want to do that.”

Since O’Rourke’s run for Senate, there have been several mass shootings across the US, including in his hometown of El Paso, Texas, which he has said has changed his views on gun control.

The presidential candidate has dropped several F-bombs about the gun control issue.

As details of the Aug. 31 shooting in Midland emerged, O’Rourke attended a campaign event in Virginia, where he told the crowd, “This is f—- up.”