Texas Republican lawmaker to Beto O'Rourke: "My AR is ready for you"
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The online conflict came on the heels of two mass shootings in Texas and on the night that O'Rourke debated fellow Democratic presidential candidates in Houston. O'Rourke, a former congressman from El Paso, touted his proposed mandatory buyback program for assault weapons at the debate and said
"hell yes" he plans to take Americans' AR-15s and AK-47s.
"My AR is ready for you Robert Francis," Cain
tweeted, calling O'Rourke by his full first and middle names.
Within hours, more than 4,000 people replied to the tweet, mostly criticizing Cain for making what they considered to be a death threat. Later in the evening, O'Rourke himself called it one.
"This is a death threat, Representative," O'Rourke
said on Twitter. "Clearly, you shouldn't own an AR-15 — and neither should anyone else."
Cain responded by calling O'Rourke a child. His comments come after two August mass shooting in Texas, including one in O'Rourke's hometown. In that massacre, a white gunman targeting Hispanic people
used an AK-47 to
fatally shoot 22 people in an El Paso Walmart. Many cited President Donald Trump's divisive rhetoric on immigrants and people of color
for inspiring the act.
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