Beto O'Rourke Brutally Shuts Down Heckler Who Laughed About Uvalde Shooting

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke laid into a pro-gun heckler at a recent campaign event, and the clip immediately went viral on social media. O'Rourke is hoping to ride his gun control message to victory in November, and his poll numbers suggest he might actually pull it off. While the rest of his record leaves a lot to be desired, his genuine passion for saving lives cannot be understated, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

Subscribe to our podcast

Become a member today!

Support us by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon, and help keep progressive media alive!

Find our merchandise at Teespring

Spread the word! LIKE and SHARE this video or leave a comment to help direct attention to the stories that matter. And SUBSCRIBE to stay connected with Ring of Fire's video content!

Support Ring of Fire by subscribing to our YouTube channel

Be sociable! Follow us on:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

At a campaign event this week, of course, in Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto, O'Rourke laid into a heckler who decided to laugh when Mr. O'Rourke was talking about the 19 children and two teachers that were murdered in a Uvalde school just a couple months ago. So take a look, uh, language warning, by the way, in case you haven't already seen this viral clip, this is Beto O'Rourke going into that protestor or, or heckler, excuse me, here it is.

I'm gonna make sure that now 11 weeks, since we lost 19 kids, and they're two teachers shot to death with a weapon originally designed for use in combat legally purchased by an 18 year old, who did not try to obtain one when he was 16 or 17, but follow the law. That's on the books, ladies and gentlemen that says that you can buy not one. You could buy two or more. If you want to AR fifteens hundreds of rounds of ammunition and take that weapon that was originally designed for use on the battlefield in Vietnam to penetrate an enemy soldier's helmet at 500 feet and knock him down, dead up against kids at five feet. It may be funny to you, but it's not funny to me. Okay.

Now I wanna start by saying this. I gave Beto O'Rourke a bit of a hard time during the 20, uh, 20 presidential race, you know, the democratic primaries. And I do not regret that at all. Any criticism I leveled at him, you know, with his voting record, you know, not really being that much of a progressive, being more of a centrist, a Mely mouth kinda guy. I don't regret any of that. And I don't take any of that back because that is still true. But what I will say is what Beto O'Rourke has evolved into since then is absolutely something that I admire him going after that heckler, that immediate response from him, like didn't waste a moment. He didn't sit there and think, what should I say to this individual that immediate anger is genuine. And because he didn't sit there and come up with this calculated response, that's how you know, it's genuine. And isn't that what we want in our politicians.

Isn't that the kind of leader that we need, somebody that is gonna go out there and have real emotions get angry when it's proper to get angry. You know, when was the last time you saw any of our aging, you know, geriatric, democratic leadership, get that mad. We've seen Bernie Sanders get that mad. Absolutely. We've seen the members of the squad get that mad. We've seen Elizabeth Warren get that mad, but have you seen that from Chuck Schumer? Have you seen it from Nancy Pelosi? Have you seen it from Joe Biden in the last couple years? I think the most recent comparison of course, would be John Stewart, who is not a democratic leader, but that's the kind of anger it's time to bring to these campaigns. Beto O'Rourke of course is trailing incumbent, Texas governor Greg Abbott by five points, which is a lot with only three months to make up the difference.

However, he does have passion at least about this issue. Now, again, I, I personally think he is not progressive enough on certain issues. However, when we're talking about Texas, which is still a red state being more progressive, maybe a hindrance for him at this point, you know, we do have to be realistic about these kinds of things. We can't just say, oh, they don't pass all of my litmus tests. So they're a candidate. That's not how that works. Different areas have different needs, have different constituencies that want different things.