During a June 19 town hall meeting in Red Oak, Iowa, Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) defended gun rights and suggested Iowans define gun control the same way Texans do–namely, as “hitting what you aim at.”
Besides defending gun rights, Cruz also told the Iowa crowd how much his wife, Heidi, loved shooting machine guns with him at an earlier campaign event in a another state.
The Huffington Post reported on the Iowa event by pointing out that Cruz “did not mention the mass shooting [in Charleston] during the town hall meeting.” But after the event, he did talk to reporters about the tragedy, saying:
It appears to be racially driven from what it was reported this strange man said, and a racial hate crime is horrific, any hate crime is horrific. I don’t think we should be using this tragedy to try and divide people and to try and seek partisan advantage. I think we should be praying for those who lost loved ones in this horrific murder.
He then pointed to the Democrats’ propensity to seize on a tragedy for political gain. He said, “I’ll tell you, it’s reminiscent of Rahm Emanuel who said you can never let a good crisis go to waste.”
On June 20 Cruz had a campaign event “at an indoor shooting range in Johnston, [Iowa].” There he called again for a defense of the Second Amendment and said, “There’s a famous saying, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.”
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.