After liberal actress Alyssa Milano mocked the religious case for gun rights on Sunday, Sen. Ted Cruz gave her the scholarly version, complete with citations and appeals to social justice.
On Saturday, State Rep. Matt Schaefer tweeted that he would not support restrictions on “the God-given rights of my fellow Texas,” including when it comes to guns. He argued that gun control would do nothing to stop “evil” shooters like the man who committed a deadly shooting in West Texas earlier in the day.
Instead, Schaefer called for faith, family and freedom from government.
MORE: Texas Loosens Gun Restrictions After Odessa-Midland Shooting
Milano, a prominent feminist Twitter activist, responded by saracastically asking where the Bible mentions gun rights.
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“This guy is unbelievable and is clearly owned by the gun lobby. #NoRA,” she said in a tweet that racked up 3,000 likes and 15,000 retweets.
Can someone cite which passage of the Bible God states it is a god-given right to own a gun? This guy is unbelievable and is clearly owned by the gun lobby. #NoRA https://t.co/PxVV1RoV2Z
— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) September 1, 2019
Conservative critics quickly buried Milano with criticism. Many cruelly recalled her recent revelation that she had two abortions when she was younger, without which she said her life would be “lacking all its great joys.”
However, Cruz, a devout evangelical Christian and Harvard-trained lawyer, took a more academic tact, unloading his knowledge on Milano in a 10-tweet thread that went viral on the right.
After subtly calling out Milano’s Twitter “snark,” the Texas Republican conceded that the specific right to bear arms is “of course” not God-given. But, he went on to argue, that right is derived from the divine rights to life and liberty on which America was founded.
An excellent Q, worth considering carefully w/o the snark of Twitter. It is of course not the right to a modern-day firearm that is God-give but rather the right to Life & the right to Liberty. Essential to that right to life is the right to DEFEND your life & your family. 1/x https://t.co/8pjstMGrGB
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 1, 2019
Cruz also noted that the “right to self-defense is recognized repeatedly in the Bible.” He cited Exodus 22:2: “If a thief is caught breaking in at night & is struck a fatal blow, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed.”
2/x The right to self-defense is recognized repeatedly in the Bible, eg Exodus 22:2: “If a thief is caught breaking in at night & is struck a fatal blow, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed.” (Note, though, verse 3 says it IS murder if during daylight (ie, not self-defense).
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 1, 2019
Without the right to self-defense, Cruz suggested, all other rights are meaningless and government tyranny follows. In a nod to Milano’s concern for racial justice, he said: “That’s also why, post Civil War, disarming Black Americans was a critical objective of the KKK, and was memorialized in countless Jim Crow laws—to strip African-Americans of their God-given right to self-defense from violence.”
8/x That’s also why, post Civil War, disarming Black Americans was a critical objective of the KKK, and was memorialized in countless Jim Crow laws—to strip African-Americans of their God-given right to self-defense from violence.
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 2, 2019
Cruz concluded by saying that as a Texan he finds the Odessa-Midland shooting “sick, deranged & horrifying.” He said Congress should take action to stop shooters before they act, but that the kind of gun confiscation advocated by some Democrats would not prevent mass murders and only “weaken our self defense.”
10/x Playing politics w/ these deranged crimes—and trying to use them as an excuse to violate the constl rights of law-abiding citizens—won’t make anybody safer. Forcible gun confiscation (as some 2020 Dems urge) won’t prevent mass-murders. But it would weaken our self-defense.
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 2, 2019
Beyond Ted Cruz and Alyssa Milano
Immediately after the shooting spree on Saturday, leading Democratic presidential candidates renewed their calls for gun control.
Just as in response to his headline-grabbing response to a shooting several weeks ago in his native El Paso, Texas, O’Rourke dropped an f-bomb to show he meant business.
“We do know that this is f—ed up. We know that this has to stop in our country,” he told a small crowd of supporters, earning cheers. He later repeated the line on CNN.
O’Rourke, who is trailing in the polls, also recalled that he recently promised that if elected president, he would “institute a mandatory buyback of every assault weapon in America.”
Fellow Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent, have also endorsed buybacks, and other candidates have laid out their own plans for stricter gun control.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump told reporters Sunday that the West Texas shooting “really hasn’t changed anything” about how lawmakers are approaching gun control legislation. He also said that background checks would not have prevented recent mass shootings.
“Over the last five, six, or seven years, no matter how strong you need the background checks, it wouldn’t have stopped any of it,” he said.
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