During Thursday’s Democratic debate in Houston, presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke renewed his call for a buyback of military-style assault weapons. That message was met with what O’Rourke called a “death threat” from one Texas lawmaker, the El Paso Times reports. Texas State Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Tea Party conservative from the Houston area, tweeted “My AR is ready for you Robert Francis” in response to O’Rourke’s “hell yes” proclamation that “we’re going to take your AR-15.” (Robert Francis are O’Rourke’s legal first and middle names.)
“Clearly, you shouldn’t own an AR-15 — and neither should anyone else,” O’Rourke said in a tweet. Cain tweeted back: “You’re a child Robert Francis” After the debate, O’Rourke was asked about Cain’s comment during a press gaggle. “I hadn’t heard of him,” O’Rourke said after being told about Cain’s tweet. “At the end of the day, I believe that Briscoe Cain is going to follow the law,” he said. “And we have a very deliberate democratic process to adopt these laws, and I expect us to go through it. But I expect this process for the first time to not be dominated by the NRA, to include the voices of Moms Demand Action, students who are marching for our lives, and everyday Americans who are sick and tired of what’s happening.”