Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano met Tuesday for a civil discussion on gun control. Also present was Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed in the February 2018 Parkland shooting.
Milano, with her dramatic pauses and wording, comes in with her guns loaded — pun very much intended. However, they must have been loaded with blanks. Cruz very respectively and accurately corrects Milano on some common anti-gun misconceptions that keep rearing the ugly heads.
Ted Cruz and Alyssa Milano on Guns
Alyssa Milano’s anti-gun opinion isn’t news. She’s been vocal on the subject for quite some time. Senator Cruz, repping the Lone Star State, is not surprisingly pro-Second Amendment; it was this reason why Milano called him for a livestream conversation, which the good senator obliged.
However, in order to have a conversation, both parties involved need to understand what’s being discussed; this is where the anti-gun groups usually struggle.
“I just want to read you something,” Milano begins, prepping a quote from former president Ronald Reagan. “‘I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.'”
Cruz, having heard the argument before, happily corrects Milano’s usage of the quote.
“One of the problems of this debate — and this is true of a lot of the media covering it [and] some of the folks following it — is the terminology; they don’t necessarily understand what it is,” Cruz says. He went on to explain the firing mechanism between machine guns and semi-automatic guns. “… When the media covers it, I think a lot of people hear the word ‘assault rifle’ and they think it is a machine gun. And so there is misunderstanding among people.”
Violent Crime Deterrent
Milano then poses the question, “Isn’t it worth it?”, which refers to a gun ban saving lives.
“Yes, we should do everything we can do stop violent crime,” Cruz answers. “But there is a flip-side to this and it’s a flip-side that I’m very concerned with, which is that guns are also used to stop crimes.”
Milano asks how a security guard with a pistol can stop someone with an AR-15. Quite easily, actually. However, Cruz wasn’t talking about security guard. He meant the average person concerned with self-defense, which he then covers. Cruz specifically references a recent incident in Houston where a woman shot an alleged robber and scared off as many as four others.
Alyssa Milano and a Dose of Hypocrisy
There’s a lot more to the 90-minute “conversation,” of which we’ve posted a brief segment above. There’s also some additional thoughts from Milano, which she voiced on CNN after the debate.
“He takes a lot of money from the NRA; we all know this. He has been on the wrong side of this issue,” Milano later says about Cruz.
Her comments beg the question: What is the “wrong side” of the issue? Or, better yet, what is the ride side of it? The side that you support? For someone who criticizes a lack of partisan politics, specifically around “gun control,” it certainly seems like she’s dishing out a lot of hypocrisy.
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