A viral clip shows an activist berate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz over his gun views in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas school massacre.
The confrontation, filmed Friday, came hours after the conservative lawmaker delivered a speech at a National Rifle Association convention in Houston.
“Why does this keep happening?” an irate man yells, accusing Cruz of “taking blood money” by giving the speech days after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that killed 19 children and two adults.
The activist, identified as Benjamin Hernandez with the liberal-leaning group Indivisible Houston, yells as security pushes him out of the eatery.
He says, “when 19 children died, that is on your hands …Ted Cruz that is on your hands.”
Hernandez initially approached the senator amicably enough and requested a photograph, which Cruz obliged, video shows.
But after the flash, Hernandez confronts Cruz and asks the senator why he refuses to support further background checks for gun purchasers.
“The background checks wouldn’t have stopped the shooter,” Cruz responds. “You know what would have? The bill I introduced-“
Hernandez quickly cuts off Cruz, who becomes visibly more agitated.
“We can make it harder for people to get guns in this country, sir,” Hernandez says. “You know that, but you stand here, you stand at the NRA convention, it is harder when there are more guns to stop gun violence.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cruz says, the clip shows.
As the verbal confrontation escalates, Cruz’s security detail gets in between the two and tells Hernandez to “back up” before he’s pushed out as things continue to escalate.
Hernandez defended his actions later on Twitter.
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“I wasn’t going to let that f—ker walk into the restaurant where I was having dinner and not have him hear me. They can do something, but they just don’t want to. So let’s let them have it,” he wrote.
“Challenge them every single time. Don’t stop until they do something,” he said in a follow-up tweet.
During his remarks at the NRA convention, Cruz blasted Democrats for pushing for stricter gun laws. He instead proposed increased security in schools, suggesting single-door entries to schools and armed guards to curb school shootings.
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