Cruz said the shooting of 20 children and 6 adults at a Connecticut elementary school was a decision point for the president.

“President Obama had an opportunity then: He could have tried to bring people together in a bipartisan manner and say, 'Let's go after violent felons, let’s go after criminals, let's protect our kids and stop the bad guys,' ” Cruz said.

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“Instead, he used it as an excuse to come after the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens."

After the Sandy Hook incident, Obama backed a proposal to expand background checks on gun purchases and to ban assault weapons. Despite dropping the latter proposal from the bill, the Senate couldn’t overcome a filibuster and the bill failed.

“Heaven and earth descended on those senators,” Cruz said.

“Thanks to the passionate leadership of the men and women in this room, when it came to the Senate floor, every single one of President Obama’s proposals to undermine the Second Amendment was voted down.”

The NRA remained silent in the week after the tragedy, until CEO Wayne LaPierre held a press conference where he called for armed guards at every school to protect students. A number of Democrats and gun-control advocates criticized his response as tone-deaf.

Cruz received a bevy of applause and a standing ovation as he left the stage as the last speaker of the session. He’s typically well-received by gun-rights advocates; as solicitor general of Texas, he led an effort along with 30 other states to draft an amicus brief in a Supreme Court case that struck down Washington’s handgun ban.

He painted that action as proof he would stay true to his principles and castigated past Republican presidential candidates for not standing by their words.

“There are a lot of good men and women thinking about running in 2016, and we’ve been around the block before and we understand that in a Republican primary, everyone stands up and says, ‘Gosh diddly, I’m the most conservative guy whose ever lived,’ ” he said.

“And yet somehow, actions don’t always seem to follow those words.”

“These are our values, this is who we are: We are fundamentally a center-right country with Judeo-Christian values and this is a time for choosing, a time for getting back to the free market principles and constitutional liberties that have built America into the greatest nation in the history of the world.”