On Sept. 17, 2019, the website Genesius Times published an article positing that Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke had announced that his security detail would be ditching their firearms in favor of NERF guns for the remainder of the 2020 campaign:
Beto’s security detail to use only NERF guns from now on
Call him what you may, a joke, a puppet, or vanilla Obama, but you can’t call Robert “Beto” O’Rourke a hypocrite. That’s because after the presidential candidate said, “Hell yes we’re going to take your guns!” threatening to violate Americans’ Second Amendment right, he instructed his security detail to only use NERF guns to protect him.
“I’m putting my money where my mouth is, which is different because that’s usually where my foot is,” O’Rourke said in a press conference. “You shouldn’t have guns and so shouldn’t my security detail.”
This item was not a factual recounting of real-life events. The article originated with a website that describes its output as being humorous or satirical in nature, as follows:
We strive to provide the most up-to-date, accurate fake news on the Internet. Our team of journalists, hacks, and starving writers only want one thing: to make you laugh and/or cry.
This piece of satire was commenting on O'Rourke's plan for a government buyback of assault weapons. When asked about this mandatory federal buyback of weapons during a Democratic presidential debate in September 2019, O'Rourke responded: "Hell yes, we’re gonna take your AR-15, your AK-47, and we’re not going to allow it to be used against your fellow Americans anymore."
Hell yeah, we're going to take your AR-15. If it's a weapon that was designed to kill people on the battlefield, we're going to buy it back. pic.twitter.com/cCEWkG6y0X
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) September 13, 2019