Alyssa Milano challenges Ted Cruz for debate over 'God-given’ gun rights so that people ‘can hear his b******t 1st hand’
Senator Ted Cruz and actress Alyssa Milano traded barbs on Twitter on Sunday, September 1, shortly after Milano responded to Republican Texas state Rep. Matt Schaefer's tweet. Schaefer, in his tweet, had stated that he was "NOT going to use the evil acts of a handful of people to diminish the God-given rights of my fellow Texans. Period. None of these so-called gun-control solutions will work to stop a person with evil intent." His comment came after a shooting rampage in Odessa, Texas, that led to the loss of seven lives, and injured 22 others.
Hours after Schaefer's tweet, Milano, a liberal activist, responded on Twitter by asking: "Can someone cite which passage of the Bible God states it is a god-given right to own a gun?" The actress also accused the Texas politician of being "unbelievable and clearly owned by the gun lobby."
Senator Cruz quickly caught on to Milano's tweet, writing that hers was an "excellent" question "worth considering [without] the snark of Twitter." He then went on, in a series of ten tweets, to cite a few examples from the Bible which, according to him, related to her question.
"It is of course not the right to a modern-day firearm that is God-give [sic] but rather the right to Life & the right to Liberty. Essential to that right to life is the right to DEFEND your life & your family," Cruz wrote on Twitter. "The right to self-defense is recognized repeatedly in the Bible," Cruz wrote, for example, "Exodus 22:2: 'If a thief is caught breaking in at night & is struck a fatal blow, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed.' (Note, though, verse 3 says it IS murder if during daylight (ie, not self-defense)."
The Texan conservative also pointed to the "unalienable rights" of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" within the Declaration of Independence, and said that it is "for that reason, the Second Amendment provides 'the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, SHALL NOT be infringed.'"
Cruz said that amendment was not put in place to protect hunting or to target practice but "to defend their lives, their homes & their families." He then cited Stephen Willeford in his tweets, a person who assisted in stopping a shooter in the 2017 Sutherland Springs church massacre.
The Republican also said that "disarming Black Americans was a critical objective of the KKK, and was memorialized in countless Jim Crow laws—to strip African-Americans of their God-given right to self-defense from violence." He added that he is leading the fight in the Senate "to do MUCH more to stop violent criminals & those w/ dangerous mental illness BEFORE they murder. Playing politics w/ these deranged crimes—and trying to use them as an excuse to violate the constl [sic] rights of law-abiding citizens—won’t make anybody safer," Cruz concluded. "Forcible gun confiscation (as some 2020 Dems urge) won’t prevent mass-murders. But it would weaken our self-defense."
The actress responded to Cruz's tweets early Monday morning and said that she would "love to come in and meet" the senator when she comes to Washington, D.C. next week, adding "we can live-stream the meeting so the American people can hear your b******t 1st hand."