A gun-rights advocacy group has endorsed U.S. Senator Ted Cruz for president.

Gun Owners of America says the Texas senator completed and returned the GOA presidential survey on the Second Amendment, and his answers convinced the gun rights lobbying group to endorse him.

Erich Pratt, communications director for Gun Owners, says Cruz is a solid pro-gun constitutionalist.

"He has promised to remove us from the U.N. anti-gun treaty. That is huge," says Pratt. "He has promised gun owners that he'll repeal Obama's anti-gun executive orders, of which there have been many, and that is real good, too."

Cruz famously confronted liberal Sen. Dianne Feinstein at a Senate hearing in 2013 (see video below), when she was pushing for a ban on so-called "assault weapons" that exempted 2,271 firearms.

"Isn't that enough for the people of the United States?" she told Cruz during the heated debate. "Do they need a bazooka?"

Citing the number or exempted weapons in Feinstein's bill, Cruz asked Feinstein if she believed it was legal for Congress to conclude that the First Amendment "shall apply only to the following books."

Cruz has a "track record" of backing up his tough talk, says Pratt, and he's taken on Republican leadership in the Senate in public.

Gun Owner's letter explaining its endorsement can be read here.