A challenger to Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz said it would have been ‘better’ if the Second Amendment ‘hadn’t been written.’
In a resurfaced video from 2018, Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, weighed in on the right to bear arms and said he did not believe the Second Amendment should have been written in the first place.
‘Within the confines of the accurately applied Second Amendment, we can do everything we want to do, as far as regulating weapons and all that,’ Allred said. ‘The Second Amendment does have, in the first sentence, in order to maintain a ‘well-regulated militia,’ and ‘the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
‘And it’s two ideas there. The recent trend has only been to focus on the right to bear arms instead of the well-regulated militia part,’ Allred continued in the video, which was first resurfaced by Breitbart. ‘So I just think we have to accurately apply it.’
‘Would it be better if it had not been written? Of course. But there’s no chance that we’re going to repeal any of the Bill of Rights amendments,’ the Texas Democrat said.
‘I’m not just talking about politically, it wouldn’t happen. It’s not within the bounds of reality in this country,’ he added. ‘But what we could do, I think, is there’s plenty of room within there to not allow people to have ‘weapons of war.”
Allred’s campaign manager Paige Hutchinson told Fox News Digital, ‘Congressman Allred’s record on this is clear: He supports common-sense reforms and respects the rights of law-abiding gun owners.’
‘He proudly supported Senator Cornyn’s bipartisan bill to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, which Ted Cruz voted against,’ Hutchinson said. ‘A highly edited clip from six years ago is not in any way an accurate reflection of Allred’s position.’
Allred voted for Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that was signed into law last year and bolstered states’ red flag laws, enhance background checks for gun buyers under 21, add penalties for some gun criminals and provide funding for a variety of health and mental health-related programs.
Cornyn’s bill also addresses the so-called ‘boyfriend loophole,’ which is a gap in federal law that means spousal domestic abusers can have gun rights taken away but not unmarried ones.
On Wednesday, Allred, a former NFL linebacker who later worked in President Obama’s administration before defeating Republican Rep. Pete Sessions in 2018 in Texas’s 32nd Congressional District, which includes parts of the city of Dallas and its northeastern suburbs, became the first major Democrat to jump into the Senate race against Cruz, who is running for a third six-year term representing Texas.
Allred’s campaign on Friday said it raised $2 million in the first 36 hours since launching his campaign, but while his $2 million haul is significant, the Texas Democrat will need to keep the aggressive pace up. Cruz began the cycle with $3.3 million in cash on-hand, while bringing in an additional $1.2 million in the first quarter of this year.
Cruz has become a Texas powerhouse in the Senate after his victory over former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, in 2018.
Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind and Tyler Olson contributed to this report.