Ted Cruz is ready to talk gun laws…
The 48-year-old half-Cuban Texas GOP Senator is set to meet with actress and activist Alyssa Milano on Tuesday to talk about gun reform, after they had a set of exchanges on Twitter over what’s needed to be done in the aftermath of mass shootings in Odessa and El Paso.
The details of the meeting haven’t been announced, but Milano will be in Washington next week.
“We don’t agree on this issue. But if we can talk with mutual respect & humility, maybe all of us come together to effect positive change,” she wrote on Twitter on Wednesday evening.
Cruz wrote that he was “looking forward” to the meeting, and added that “if all of us can together have more positive, civil discussion & debate on the substantive issues of the day, that would go a long way to helping unite and heal our divided Nation.”
Milano had originally proposed the meeting be live-streamed “so the American people can hear your bullshit 1st hand.” On Tuesday, Cruz responded by saying he would agree to a meeting “about uniting to stop gun violence & about theConstitution.”
Over the weekend, following a mass shooting in Odessa that killed seven people and injured 22, Milano criticized a Texas Republican lawmaker, Matt Schaefer, who said that gun control solutions would not stop a person “with evil intent.”
Milano wrote, “Can someone cite which passage of the Bible God states it is a god-given right to own a gun? This guy is unbelievable and is clearly owned by the gun lobby.”
Cruz then responded that “it is of course not the right to a modern-day firearm that is God-given but rather the right to Life & the right to Liberty. Essential to that right is the right to DEFEND your life & your family.”
When the U.S. Senatereturns to session next week, Democrats are expected to press Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring legislation to the floor to expand background checks. In the aftermath of the El Paso and Dayton, Ohio mass shootings, President Donald Trumpinitially indicated that he favored such a proposal, but he has appeared to back away from that stance, following a reported conversation with a top National Rifle Association official.
Mathew Littman, the president of the group 97% Gun Reform, said that the meeting between Cruz and Milano “are the kinds of things that should be happening more often. We shouldn’t be talking past each other. We should be talking to each other.”
He credited Milano and Cruz for agreeing to the meeting, adding “that they are willing to talk to someone who completely disagrees with them is what we should be doing.”
Littman said he has met with Milano to talk about gun reform, and said that she “is about the smartest person I have talked to on the gun issue.” “I really appreciate that Alyssa is willing to do this, but that is what Alyssa does.”
Spokespersons for Cruz and Milano didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on further details of the meeting.
