for providing transportation. and the reason for these and other restricted measures, listen to texas republican state representative briscoe cane who chairs the house election committee and has been spearheading the bill. this isn t about party. this isn t about what happened in d.c. this isn t about 2020 or 2018 or even before that. this is about instilling confidence in the electorate. they feel like what happens in their government, the laws that are made was because they chose to. keeping it honest, the only reason there is any talk about a lack of confidence in the election regarding the vote is because the former president and his followers have pushed and pushed and pushed the big lie. here s what keith ingram, the director of elections, had to say about the elections in 2020. in spite of all the circumstances, texas had an election that was smooth and secure. similarly, there were no widespread irregularities in 2018. not in texas or anywhere else in
briscoe cane is patrolling after showing what appeared to be a gun. he tweeted, my ar is ready for you, robert francis. he replied, this is a death threat. clearly you shouldn t own an ar-15 and neither should anybody else. the campaign referred the threat to the fbi. joining me now is beto o rourke, democratic candidate for president. congressman, thank you so much for being here. thank you for having me, joy. grateful. thank you. let s start with that threat. can you give us an update on what was the response from the npr? have you gotten a response back after that threat was given to you? if we have i haven t heard yet. i think this is a routine matter. if we re ever threatened by anyone, we turn that over to law
they ve told me themselves, i don t need this. i don t need it to hunt or protect myself. it s fun to use. but if giving this back or cutting it to pieces or selling it to the government keeps things safer, let s do it because i have kids in school as well, and they ask me if it s a matter of when or if a killer is going to come into their school and take the lives of their fellow students or take their kids lives. so, look, we re either going to let the nra set the terms of this debate. we re either going to allow briscoe cane to set the terms of this debate or we ll let the american people, including march for our lives which is coming out with a proposal to make peace in this country and do something about the 40,000 gun deaths we see every single year. that s who we should be listening to right now, that s who i am listening to as well as people across this country who want us to actually see us do something about gun violence.
again, part of what we have to do as commentators who heard the words that came out of his mouth, are use the words that came out of his mouth. he didn t say i want to go and take away everyone s guns but we re talking about the kind of guns responsible for the mass shootings where we have to keep saying that you re in our thoughts and in our prayers. it is time for this to be in our actions. and incrementalism has never served. particularly communities of color and low income communities. you can t say, yes, we re going to take away your ak-47. and o rourke tweeted a picture of the rifle with a caption beto has a ban for that, taking off of elizabeth warren has a plan for that. briscoe cane responded my ar is ready for you, robert francis, his given name. twitter ended up removing cane s tweet after o rourke reported to the fbi that it was a death