Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke interrupted a press conference devoted to the recent elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas to demand greater gun control. However, he was ordered to sit down and called an “embarrassment” and a “sick son of a b***h.”
Robert Francis ‘Beto’ O’Rourke, a former Democratic congressman and one-time presidential hopeful who is now running for the governorship of Texas, stood up during a press conference by Governor Greg Abbott on Wednesday to accuse lawmakers of “doing nothing” to “stop the next shooting.”
“You’re out of line and an embarrassment,” Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick told O’Rourke, while Senator Ted Cruz ordered O’Rourke to cease his “stunt” and “sit down.”
“I can’t believe you’re a sick son of a b***h who would come to a deal like this to make a political issue,” Don McLaughlin, the mayor of Uvalde, Texas, said as O’Rourke was led away by security.
Abbott’s press conference was held a day after a teenage gunman shot his grandmother before embarking on a bloody rampage at an elementary school in Uvalde. The gunman killed 19 children and two adults, before he was shot dead by police. Democrats have already called for stricter gun laws in the wake of the massacre, with Biden incorrectly labeling the AR-15 style rifle used by the shooter as an “assault weapon” and declaring it “wrong” that such weapons can be bought legally.
Throughout his failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, O’Rourke made gun control a core issue of his platform. Conservatives and gun rights activists claimed that the then-congressman would lead a “gun-grabbing” initiative if elected, and O’Rourke did little to allay their concerns, famously declaring that confiscating Americans’ rifles was “exactly what we’re going to do… Americans who own AR-15s, AK-47s, will have to sell them to the government.”
READ MORE: What we know about the Texas mass shooting
Once O’Rourke was led out of the auditorium, Abbott told the audience that “there are family members whose hearts are broken. There’s no words that anybody shouting can come up here and do anything to heal these broken hearts.”
The Uvalde massacre was America’s deadliest school shooting since the bloodbath at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, in which 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed 27 people, including 20 first-grade children, before turning his weapon on himself.
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