Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke slammed his ex-colleagues in Congress for their lack of action on gun violence following another mass shooting in his home state on Saturday.
“Not sure how many gunmen. Not sure how many people have been shot. Don’t know how many people have been killed. The condition of those who have survived. Don’t know what the motivation is, do not yet know the firearms that were used or how they acquired them,” he told voters in Fairfax, Virginia. “But we do know this is f–ked up.”
The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, who had previously vowed to stop swearing on the campaign trail, proceeded to blast lawmakers for failing to pass universal background checks or to close gun purchasing loopholes and encouraged the crowd not to normalize these tragedies.
“There is no reason that we have to accept this as our fortune, as our future, as our fate. And yet functionally, right now, we have,” he said. “This is not an act of God. This is not some natural disaster. This is a human-caused problem with a human solution, and, if you’re willing, we can be the humans who are going to do something about this.”
We don’t know how many have been killed. We don’t know the motivation. But here’s what we do know: This is fucked up. pic.twitter.com/NRvyPfUjiM
— Beto O’Rourke (@BetoORourke) September 1, 2019
At least six people were killed, and 21 injured when a gunman opened fire in the cities of Odessa and Midland, Texas, on Saturday. The shooter was later shot and killed by police. His identity has not yet been released, but police indicated that he was a white male in his mid-30s. The tragedy came just weeks after another mass shooting in O’Rourke’s former district in El Paso, Texas.
