Cornyn faces backlash over "mob" comments

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Sen. John Cornyn isn’t exactly any gun rights supporter’s favorite senator right now. After all, you don’t spearhead efforts to create a bipartisan gun control deal and not earn a little ire from the gun rights community.

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In fact, it led to him being booed at the state GOP convention.

His reaction afterward were to refer to those who were so vocally critical of him as a “mob.”

Yeah, that didn’t go over well, either.

Now the Texas senator is facing still more backlash.

Fallout continues from U.S. Sen. John Cornyn negotiating a bipartisan gun control bill and calling Texas Republicans who jeered and booed at him the Texas GOP Convention “a mob.”

The National Association for Gun Rights has denounced Cornyn, R-Texas, and demanded that he apologize for calling Texas Republicans a “mob.”

State Rep. Bryan Slaton has called on Cornyn to resign. “Compromise Cornyn should absolutely apologize to the grassroots @TexasGOP activists he called a mob,” Slaton said. “And he should stop his attacks on their Second Amendment rights or resign.”

While giving remarks at the convention, Cornyn was booed, jeered and interrupted by delegates for the entire 15 minutes he spoke. Chanting “no Red Flag” and “don’t take away our Second Amendment rights,” they also called him a traitor, The Center Square observed.

The delegates also unanimously approved a resolution condemning the bill he proposed.

However, in response to being booed, he criticized the base that helped elect him.

Cari Kelemen, author of “Consider Homeschooling,” said, “I have friends that booed John Cornyn to his face at the Texas GOP Convention and chanted ‘No red flags! No red flags!’ Did he listen? No. He just called them a mob.”

Scott Braddock with the Quorum Report tweeted, “After @JohnCornyn was met with such hatred at the @TexasGOP convention in Houston, I’m told he said to a few people, ‘I’ve never given in to the mobs and I’m not starting today.’”

Cornyn retweeted Braddock’s tweet affirming his support. He hasn’t denied making the comments or directly responded to requests that he apologize or resign. His office couldn’t be reached for comment.

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So he’s basically acknowledging that he called those who loudly disagreed with him a mob.

Wow.

Look, Cornyn should know better than I do that if you support gun control, there are going to be some of your fellow Texans that are going to take issue with that. While his approval rating might still be strong there, the truth of the matter is that those who disagree with him are going to passionately disagree with him.

And let’s be honest, no one booing expected that it would force Cornyn to change his mind. It was simply an effort to show their displeasure.

In this country, we have a right to tell our elected officials how we feel, after all. That’s all they were doing here.

Frankly, if Cornyn can’t take that kind of heat without thinking it’s a mob, maybe politics isn’t the right place for him.

In the end, though, I doubt there will be any kind of change one way or another. Cornyn doesn’t run for re-election anytime soon and unless he faces a serious primary challenge, he’ll likely win another term.

So while he’s facing warranted backlash, both for the bill and his comments, don’t expect anything to come of it. He won’t resign like Slaton is demanding, and it’s now too late to do anything about the bill.

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