Beto O’ Rourke isn’t just calling out Texas’s loose gun restrictions. He’s calling out hecklers too. During a Wednesday campaign event at a town hall in Mineral Falls, Texas, the Democratic candidate for governor erupted when someone in the audience laughed during remarks about the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
O’Rourke, a longtime advocate for gun reform, had been critiquing Texas’s gun laws that allowed the gunman in the Uvalde massacre to purchase his weapon legally. “(He) did not wait until he was sixteen or seventeen, but followed the law that’s on the books ladies and gentlemen,” O’ Rourke told the crowd, before getting down on one knee to emphasize that the gun had been designed for military use.
Then someone laughed. Loudly.
“It may be funny to you, motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me,” said O’Rourke, prompting a raucous cheer from the audience. Several videos of the encounter went viral on Twitter, with one reaching over 3.4 million views.
Tonight, in Mineral Wells, Texas
When a @GregAbbott_TX supporter laughs, yes, laughs out loud so everyone could hear, while Beto described the massacre of 19 children and 2 teachers in Uvalde, Beto quite appropriately lets loose with a MF.
Yep.
It was a pretty good one too. pic.twitter.com/t5LLMIPXeP— BetoMedia (@BetoMedia) August 11, 2022
Nothing more serious to me than getting justice for the families in Uvalde and stopping this from ever happening again.
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) August 11, 2022
This isn’t the first time that O’Rourke has confronted someone for presumably failing to take gun control seriously. Days after the Uvalde shooting in May, O’Rourke crashed a news conference attended by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and was heard telling Abbott that he was “doing nothing” to protect people from gun violence.
“This is on you. Until you choose to do something, this will continue to happen,” O’Rourke said. “Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state, or they will continue to be killed.”
The identity of the heckler at Wednesday’s town hall is unclear. But a video from the event showed that several Abbott supporters were in attendance.
