Rep. Norma Torres, a California Democrat who participated in a gun control protest five years ago on the House floor, revealed she owns a 9 mm handgun that sits next to her while she sleeps at night.
Torres made the revelation during an interview with the Los Angeles Times when she described she feared for her life following a series of heated Twitter exchanges that she engaged in with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. Back in April, Torres tweeted a well-known image of a deceased Salvadoran father and his young daughter who drowned in the Rio Grande while attempting to reach the United States.
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“This is a result of narcissistic dictators like you interested in being ‘cool’ while people flee by the 1000s & die by the 100s,” she wrote above the photo. Bukele retaliated on Twitter and called on Salvadorans living in Southern California to organize to eject Torres from office, tweeting, “She doesn’t work for you,” adding, “but to keep our countries underdeveloped.”
Bukele’s crusade to oust her from office included urging Salvadoran constituents to swamp her office with phone calls. The online rhetoric from Bukele’s followers became so intense, Torres said, she began to sleep with a gun at arm’s reach.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Torres’s office for comment about when she purchased her firearm and if she has a conceal carry permit but did not hear back.
Torres, who was not previously known as a firearm owner, participated in a gun control protest on the House floor with the rest of her party in June 2016, when Republicans held the majority in both chambers. Democrats demanded that Republicans bring to the floor a gun control measure known as the “no-fly, no buy” bill, which would prohibit terror suspects on the “no-fly” list from purchasing guns.
But House Republicans argued the legislation could too easily ensnare innocent individuals on the list. GOP lawmakers referenced past circumstances of well-known innocent individuals who were mistakenly placed on the terrorist watch list and were barred from flying on airlines.
“The NRA supports the right of all law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms, even those like Rep. Torres who have a long history of fighting to eliminate those same rights for others,” National Rifle Association spokesman Lars Dalseide told the Washington Examiner.
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The California Democrat, a native of Guatemala who immigrated to the U.S. as a 5-year-old child with her family, previously endured a kidnapping attempt and survived shootouts at that time in her life.
