Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke declared on the campaign trail that owners of semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 shouldn’t “be able to keep them.”

O’Rourke, the Democratic nominee, said during two different town halls just days before the Uvalde, Texas, mass school shooting that AR-15s have no place in civilian life.

“I think we are fools to believe anything other than that these weapons of war will continued to be used with greater frequency against our fellow Americans,” O’Rourke told a group of veterans during a town hall meeting in Abilene on May 21.