“So we’re left with a choice. We can stick by what we’ve been doing — playing it safe, while we beg Mitch McConnell to take action on the floor of Congress. Or we can follow the lead of the students marching for their lives, and for all of ours, who are demanding we do more to protect them,” the former Texas congressman wrote in an op-ed published in Teen Vogue on Monday.

“I choose the kids. And the question I have for my fellow Democrats in this race and in Congress is: Do you?”

The “Peace Plan for a Safer America” calls for a mandatory buyback program of assault-style weapons. O’Rourke has been an outspoken advocate for such a proposal since a mass shooting in his hometown of El Paso, Texas killed 22 people at a Walmart.