Beto O'Rourke Rails Against 'F***ed Up' Mass Shootings During Live CNN Appearance

By Benjamin Fearnow On 9/1/19 at 11:53 AM EDT

U.S. CNN Dana Bash State of the Union Mass Shooting

An impassioned Beto O'Rourke told CNN's Dana Bash the epidemic of U.S. gun violence is "f***ed up" in an interview Sunday, just one day after the second mass shooting in less than a month rocked his home state of Texas.

The former Texas congressman dropped the live f-bomb on CNN's State of the Union as he doubled down on a comment he previously made at a campaign stop about lawmakers' inability to enact effective gun control measures. CNN played a video clip showing O'Rourke telling supporters at a rally for his 2020 presidential campaign that the most recent Texas mass shooting on Saturday near Odessa and Midland is "f***ed up" and only indicative of the country's wider gun violence epidemic.

O'Rourke demanded politicians enact gun control laws instead of offering "thoughts and prayers" and he reiterated that the country's repeated mass shootings are unique to the United States.

"The rhetoric that we've used, the 'thoughts and prayers' that you'd just referred to, it has done nothing to stop the epidemic of gun violence," O'Rourke said. "To protect our kids, our families, our fellow Americans in public places. At a Walmart in El Paso where 22 were killed. In Sutherland Springs, in a church. One or two a day all over this country. A hundred killed daily in the United States of America. We're averaging about 300 mass shootings a year. No other country comes close."

"So yes, this is f***ed up," O'Rourke said in stride on the live cable news show.

"If we don't call it out for what it is, if we're not able to speak clearly, if we're not able to act decisively, then we will continue to have this kind of bloodshed in America," he added.

"And I cannot accept that. And so we're going to speak as defiantly and as strongly as we can, but we're also going to take action. Universal background checks, red flag laws, the end of the sales of weapons of war and buying those AK-47s and AR-15s back so they cannot be used against our fellow Americans."

O'Rourke also discussed his recent visit to an Arkansas gun show where he said a firearm vendor told him he "should be able" to sell anyone over the age of 18 with or without a criminal or mental health background check.

The O'Rourke CNN appearance on Sunday comes just hours after the West Texas shootings which left eight people dead and at least 21 injured between Odessa and Midland. O'Rourke spoke to supporters during a Saturday campaign stop just as news of the shootings broke.

"We do not yet know what the motivation is, we do not know the firearms that were used or how they acquired them but we do know this is f***ed up," O'Rourke said, eliciting applause and cheers from campaign stop attendees.

This is not O'Rourke's first public run-in with the f-word in front of reporters. In early August, after the El Paso Walmart shootings which left 22 dead, O'Rourke went on a rant against President Donald Trump and questions about how his rhetoric may have influenced the shooter.

"What do you think? You know the s*** he's been saying. He's been calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. I don't know, like, members of the press, what the f***?" O'Rourke said in response to a reporter's question.