Former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz Thursday ripped Democratic senators for their 15-hour filibuster Wednesday to get the chamber to vote for several gun-control measures next week, calling it "a political show on the Senate floor."
"Democrat after Democrat standing for hours incensed not at ISIS, incensed not at radical Islamic terrorism — incensed that Americans have a right to keep and bear arms," the Texas GOP senator said on the floor. "This is political distraction. This is political gamesmanship.
"I think the American people find it ridiculous that in response to an ISIS terror attack, the Democrats go on high dungeon that we've got to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.
"This is not a gun control issue," Cruz said. "This is a terrorism issue."
Cruz, the first-term senator who dropped out of the 2016 campaign last month, spoke on the Senate floor for more than 21 hours against Obamacare in 2013.
The effort came amid the skirmish on Capitol Hill over funding the federal government, eventually leading to a 16-day partial shutdown that October that cost American taxpayers $1.4 billion.