Post-Debate Death Threat From Texas Lawmaker Drives Home Beto O'Rourke's Point About Assault Weapons: Ban Them Because the Gun Nuts Are Not "Good Guys"
September 13th 2019
Beto O’Rourke rally (Luke Harold)
By Laura Clawson
You just knew the Twitter commando threats would pour in after former Rep. Beto O’Rourke said, in Thursday’s debate, “If the high impact, high velocity round, when it hits your body, shreds everything inside of your body because it was designed to do that so you would bleed to death on a battlefield and not be able to get up and kill one of our soldiers,” then, “Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47! We're not going to allow it to be used against a fellow American anymore.” And it didn’t take long—with one of the first threats coming from an elected official.
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Texas state Rep. Briscoe Cain tweeted (and then deleted) the threat, “My AR is ready for you Robert Francis.” Which beautifully made O’Rourke’s point, and allowed him to hammer it home.
As Talking Points Memo reports, O’Rourke expanded on that on CNN, saying that “anytime you have somebody threatening to use violence against somebody in this country to resolve a political issue or really for any reason, that’s a matter for law enforcement. But it really drives home the point, better than I could have made. Representative Briscoe Cain is making the case that no one should have an AR-15. That they can hold over someone else in this country, say, ‘look, if we disagree on something, let me introduce you to my AR-15.’ Absolutely wrong.”
But that’s a powerful strain of gun culture—“I’m more powerful than you because I can threaten to shoot you.” “My gun-stroking rights trump your right to live.” “This makes me more of a man.” And it is, as O’Rourke told us, and Cain and way too many mass shooters have showed us, a culture we empower over the bodies of dead children and parents and brothers and sisters.
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