Texas senator Ted Cruz (R) was confronted at a restaurant in Houston after his appearance at the National Rifle Association (NRA) convention on Friday.
The exchange came days after an 18-year-old gunman murdered 19 children and 2 teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday.
A video posted to social media shows Benjamin Hernandez, a board member of Indivisible Houston, a political advocacy organization, confronting Cruz in a restaurant about his appearance at the NRA convention and his stance on guns.
“Why did you speak tonight? Why did you come here to the convention to take blood money? Why, when 19 children died? 19 children died! That’s on your hands!” Hernandez told Cruz.
Indivisible Houston posted a longer video showing the beginning of the exchange between Cruz and Hernandez. The video shows Hernandez posing for a photo with Cruz before he began asking why the senator refuses to support stricter gun control laws including background checks.
“As a constituent, you know, he refuses to allow us to engage him in open public forums. So this is one of the ways we can reach him. I’d never done anything like this before,” Hernandez told Insider. “In that moment, I’m like, ‘I have to do this because there are people that are really suffering.’ And if it takes Ted Cruz, you know, making Ted Cruz uncomfortable while he’s having dinner, I mean, that’s just the price of it.”
[READ: 10-year-old survivor of Uvalde shooting says “almost all” his friends died in the attack.]
Hernandez is an independent who ran for Congress in 2018 to represent Texas’ ninth congressional district.
Cruz appeared at the NRA annual conference in Houston on Friday even though several of his GOP colleagues, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn dropped out of the event after the shooting.
At the conference, Cruz blamed declining church attendance, prescription drugs and social media bullying for mass shooting, but not guns. Infact, he argued that there should be more guns and fewer doors, saying that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
“The fact that Ted Cruz still shows up to the convention, an organization that actively blocks, you know, legislation that can help end gun violence in this country. I mean, that’s just beyond belief,” Hernandez told Insider.
