Beto Claps Back Regarding Uvalde Shooting: 'It's Not Funny To Me'

MINERAL WELLS, TX — Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, responded to a heckler with an expletive at a campaign stop in Mineral Wells on Wednesday after he heard an exaggerated laugh while he was discussing the Uvalde elementary school shooting.

O'Rourke was discussing the ease with which the gunman who shot and killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in May was able to legally obtain an "AR-15 and hundreds of rounds of ammunition" when a cackled laugh can be heard in a video posted by an O'Rourke supporting Twitter account.

"That may be funny to you mother (expletive), but it's not funny to me," O'Rourke quickly replied.

A small group of people holding campaign signs for his opponent, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, were gathered in the back of the room. It is unclear to whom specifically O'Rourke is talking in the video.

The crowd of O'Rourke supporters cheered and clapped for O'Rourke's retort.

"We're gonna make sure that kids starting their school year right now don't have to worry about somebody walking into their school with a weapon like this," O'Rourke said after the crowd quieted.

Ahead of the interruption, O'Rourke described AR-15s as weapons “originally designed for use on the battlefields of Vietnam," and criticized how the 18-year-old gunman was able to legally buy an assault-style rifle and use it in the Uvalde school, pointing out he didn't try to get one before he was of the legal age.

By Thursday afternoon, the video had been viewed nearly 4 million times on Twitter.

In the aftermath of the shooting, O'Rourke interrupted a news conference held by Abbott and other local and state officials criticizing him and other Republicans for Texas' lax gun laws.

Gun violence has been a key issue in O'Rourke's campaigns, especially since a 2019 mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, where O'Rourke is from.