Mayor Lightfoot hits Senator Ted Cruz again on gun laws

“I've invited him to come to Chicago. I'd love for him to walk the streets of the West Side and the South Side,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.

Mayor Lightfoot has followed up on an invitation to Texas Senator Ted Cruz, one she's made through Twitter and now The Washington Post.

She acted after Cruz appeared to blame shootings and killings in Chicago on laws that "disarmed" local residents.

It's a long-out-of-date NRA talking point, so Cruz may not have known tens of thousands of Chicagoans have concealed carry permits when the Texan tweeted, "Gun control doesn’t work. Look at Chicago. Disarming law-abiding citizens isn’t the answer."  

A week later, Mayor Lightfoot's not letting it go.

“I still am mystified, given the horrible tragedies that have happened in Texas recently, that he chose to make an attack on Chicago in the midst of all of that,” she said.

Saying Twitter's not the place for a substantive debate, the mayor turned to a weekend op-ed in The Washington Post.    

"We need to close the loopholes that allow people to purchase deadly weapons without a background check. We need to end the proliferation of assault weapons,” she wrote.

Lightfoot accused Cruz and the senate's majority leader of "dereliction of... Duty."

“Pushing Mitch McConnell to finally, finally pass a full background bill,” she said.

The mayor said she hasn't received a response yet from Cruz to her invitation. We reached out to his office with voice mails and email messages, and we haven't heard back either.