In the wake of the tragic shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) gave an impassioned defense of the Second Amendment during the National Rifle Association’s annual convention that was held just days after.
“If children are the picture of innocence, then the lunatics and the monsters like this one, the one who would deliberately murder children, they are the picture of evil,” Cruz said. “The anguish of those families right now is unimaginable. The very worst pain on Earth.”
“All of us in Texas need to come together and comfort those families right now. We need to love them, embrace them, and take care of them,” he added.
Cruz then took a jab at “the elites who dominate our culture” for pushing the notion that “firearms lie at the root of the problem.”
Instead of blaming the second amendment for the uptick in gun violence and mass shootings across the nation in recent years, the Texas senator targeted a down-spiraling culture. Saying, “when we were growing up, this kind of thing didn’t happen.”
To further his point, Cruz highlighted the positives behind the second amendment. Citing an Obama White House report that said firearms “are used defensively to stop a crime between 500,000 and one million times every single year.”
Of course, despite the sympathy and mourning for the loss of human life, the senator’s comments were still met with outrage from left-wing activists.
Just after the speech, Cruz was confronted by an individual with the liberal-leaning group Indivisible Houston who accused the conservative lawmaker of “taking blood money.”
“When 19 children died, that is on your hands … Ted Cruz that is on your hands,” the activist said in the viral clip – WATCH:
It’s also worth noting that popular liberal podcaster Ethan Klein said someone should “bomb” the NRA conference just days before. Sparking other Twitter users to chime in to denounce Republicans for their unwillingness to increase gun control or amend 2A.
In another example of leftists exploiting tragedy for political gain, Texas Democratic gubernatorial nominee Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke heckled Governor Greg Abbott during a presser on the shooting earlier this week.
“You want a solution? Stop selling AR-15s in the state of Texas. You want a solution? Have universal background checks. We don’t have them. You want a solution? Red flag laws or extreme risk protection orders, which stop a shooting before it happens,” he said after being escorted out.
The whole debacle between O’Rourke and Abbott was so tasteless and out-of-line that Uvalde Mayor Don Mclaughlin infamously called O’Rourke a “sick son of a b****.”
But what Cruz said during his speech resonates with most Americans, and is the argument for the second amendment that the typical gun owner agrees with.
“We must not react to evil and tragedy by abandoning the Constitution or infringing on the rights of our law-abiding citizens,” Cruz explained.
“Now is not the time to yield to panic or intimidation or fear,” the lawmaker continued. “Now is not the time for lies. It is not the time for empty political gestures. Now is the time for unity. Now is the time for love. And now is the time for action to protect our rights, to stop those with evil in their hearts and to do everything humanly possible to protect our children and to protect our families.”