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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) Was frightened at a Houston restaurant Friday night after his speech at the National Rifle Association convention, in which he widely rejected gun control proposals. after the Uvalde school shooting.
A video shared on social media shows Cruz stoically standing at Uptown Sushi in Houston as a man challenges him to support the expansion of background checks on gun sales, which the senator and many of his colleagues Republican leagues have rejected.
“Why did you come here to the convention?” the man, later identified as Benjamin Hernandez, asked Cruz. “Why? When 19 children died!”
When Hernandez was removed by security guards, he said to Cruz, “This is in your hands! This is in your hands, Ted Cruz! This is in your hands!”
Cruz said goodbye to him before reuniting with his family at his table.
Someone questioned Ted Cruz while he was eating at a restaurant last night
“19 kids are dead! This is in your hands! Ted Cruz, this is in your hands!” pic.twitter.com/PaeiQYqfBo
– philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) May 28, 2022
Neither Cruz’s office nor Uptown Sushi owners responded immediately to requests for comment early Saturday morning.
Hernandez told The Washington Post that he approached Cruz because he hoped the senator would address his opposition to the bills by demanding background checks on arms sales, which are still unlikely to be approved in the Senate. .
On May 27, people gathered in Houston for the National Rifle Association’s annual convention, days after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers. (Video: Adriana Usero / The Washington Post)
“I wanted to get an answer on something as simple and basic as background checks,” said Hernandez, 39, a board member of Indivisible Houston, a pro-democracy liberal group that claims elected officials are responsible for their actions. “But it was as if he was deviating from the responsibility of being a U.S. senator.”
Hours earlier, Cruz took the stage at the NRA’s annual meeting in Houston, where he joined former President Donald Trump in rejecting proposals for new restrictions and calling for more security or mental health checks instead. the school, while issuing dark warnings of alleged Democratic plots to take up arms.
“The elites who dominate our culture tell us that guns are at the root of the problem,” Cruz said in his address to the crowd on Friday. “It is much easier to slander one’s own political opponents and demand that responsible citizens lose their constitutional rights than to examine cultural disease, leading to indescribable acts of evil.”
Trump and Cruz join NRA leaders in challenging response to the Uvalde shooting
While several GOP interpreters and lawmakers left NRA events after the Robb Elementary School massacre, Republicans who kept their spaces to speak at the annual meeting were challenging, despite growing public pressure . Protesters gathered outside the George R. Brown Convention Center, about 300 miles from Uvalde, to demand gun control and authorities’ responses.
In his statement, Cruz said the shooting was “the ultimate nightmare for all parents” and accused Democrats of seeking to use the massacre as a pretext to “disarm Americans.”
He also suggested that schools should have a single door guarded by armed police or trained military veterans, a plan that would appear to be in breach of fire safety laws that require more than one exit to buildings. Cruz also called for bulletproof doors and closed classroom doors.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s school shooting response under scrutiny
The statements came on the same day that the Texas Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that police on Tuesday made the disastrous choice not to chase gunman Salvador Ramos into a classroom where students were trapped. Agents waited outside, in a hallway, while children in panic inside repeatedly called 911 for help, authorities said. Officials say Ramos came out of a classroom closet firing Border Patrol tactics into the room.
Police made a “wrong decision” not to prosecute Uvalde, according to the official
Preparations for the funeral are underway for the 21 people killed by Ramos, 18, in the attack.
Officials have faced great outrage over how they handled the tragedy, especially after revelations that parents had asked the outside police to come in and confront the shooter sooner, just to prevent them from entering themselves.
Arms rights groups have donated more than $ 442,000 to Cruz’s campaigns or political action committees during his career, most of any legislator between 1989 and 2020, according to data from the Federal Electoral Commission. of 2021 cited by OpenSecrets, a nonprofit.
Earlier this week, Cruz turned away from an interview after a British journalist asked him why mass shootings happen “only in America.” Cruz, who attended a vigil in Uvalde and greeted and hugged residents and relatives of the victims, made an exception to Sky News’ Mark Stone when he asked, “Why is this only happening in your country?… For what only in America? Why is this American exceptionalism so horrible?
“You know, I’m sorry you think American exceptionality is horrible,” Cruz replied. “You have your political agenda. God loves you.”
Cruz walks away after being asked why mass shootings are happening “in America only”
This is far from the first time the Texas senator has been questioned in public.
In 2018, Cruz and his wife, Heidi, were called out of a Washington restaurant by members of a protest group opposing their support for the nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, a confirmation process that was interrupted by allegations that one of them had sexually assaulted him. woman and engaged in sexual misconduct with another as a teenager.
After Cruz traveled to Cancun, Mexico, in February 2021, while millions of Texas residents were without electricity and safe drinking water amid freezing temperatures, the senator was challenged by rapper Bun B in an Astros playoff game. of Houston.
“Where you going?” asked Bun B. “Cancun?”
On Friday night, Hernandez began ordering a photo with Cruz, who was having dinner with his family at Uptown Sushi, according to the video. After taking the photo, Hernandez addressed Cruz and asked him what he could do to persuade the senator to support gun control laws in the United States. When Cruz advised him to watch his speech at the NRA convention, Hernandez was not satisfied.
“Why can’t you support stronger weapons laws in this country?” Hernandez asked.
Cruz, who looked at the phone with a camera and realized it was being recorded, argued again that his bill to tighten school security would have helped prevent school shootings like Uvalde’s. As Hernandez cheered more, a security officer stepped in between him and Cruz.
“You combine ignorance and hatred,” Cruz told him in the video. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The situation became more tense, with Cruz raising his voice to argue that “my bill” would have stopped filming, the video shows. A few seconds later, Hernandez was pulled away by several people as he repeated his question about the mass shootings: “Why is this still happening?”
Knowing he was likely to be kicked out of the restaurant, which was him, Hernandez said he paid the bill for him and his wife early.
“I left a big tip to the waiter,” he said, acknowledging the headache he probably caused at the restaurant.
Hernandez said he was horrified by the families of the victims in Uvalde and what had happened in recent days. He argued that he was doing his part to support them by confronting the Republican senator about what could be done to prevent the next Uvalde.
“Everything we’ve been doing hasn’t worked,” he said. “It can be awkward and hard to ask, but it’s something we have to do: we have to ask the hard questions.”
Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.