Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, must be hopping mad that 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke is calling for the forced, mandatory confiscation of all AR-15 and AR-15-style rifles.

Just think of the years of care and effort that gun control activists such as Coons have put into trying to convince voters that no one is coming for their guns. All that careful wording and rhetorical finesse, just poof! Up in smoke, because a former Texas congressman has aspirations for the presidency.

It's not easy watching all your hard work get destroyed by someone else's publicity stunt.

"I’m a gun owner," Coons said Friday in an interview on CNN. "My sons and I have gone skeet shooting and hunting and, frankly, I don’t think having our presidential candidates, like Congressman O’Rourke did, say that we’re going to try and take people’s guns against their will is a wise either policy or political move."

On Thursday, during a Democratic primary debate in Houston, O’Rourke said in no uncertain terms that his administration would force gun owners to surrender certain types of firearms.

"If the high-impact, high-velocity round when it hits your body shreds everything inside of your body because it was designed to do that,” O’Rourke said, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used on fellow Americans anymore."

Moments after saying this, the former congressman’s team unveiled a new campaign T-shirt bearing the slogan, “Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15.”

Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15.



Buy your shirt now: https://t.co/kEJxoLvfH5 pic.twitter.com/KKpAKX4IL8 — Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) September 13, 2019

The next day, during an interview on MSNBC, O’Rourke stressed that participation in his confiscation program would not be voluntary. It would be mandatory.

"[T]hat that clip will be played for years at Second Amendment rallies with organizations that try to scare people by saying Democrats are coming for your guns," Coons said Friday.

CNN's Poppy Harlow asked the senator whether O'Rourke’s new platform will hurt the Democratic Party.

"We’ll have to see," Coons said. "I respect his passion. Anyone who has had to sit with the parents of victims of gun violence, parents who have lost their children, as I have, after the Sandy Hook shooting, after the Tucson shooting, parents. ...To sit with a parent who has lost a child and have no answer about how we’re going to make the country safer is a very hard experience.”

The senator added, “So I respect what is motivating Congressman O'Rourke, but I don’t think as a policy position that’s going to stand muster.”

Translation: Not helping, Beto!