Texas Sen. Ted Cruz ripped “oh so brave” corporate executives demanding gun control, calling them ill-informed on guns and more interested in playing politics.

“I don’t think it is a positive thing to see big corporations shifting their focus from the customers, actually doing what they were created to do, into trying to become political players on divisive social issues,” Cruz said Thursday of a new call for action by 145 chief executives.

“We have seen in recent months and years, for example, big banks trying to use their economic power to defund politically disfavored groups. That’s not the job of a bank,” said the Republican, who has met with the victims of recent mass shootings in Texas.

Cruz, in a media breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, said that when he sat down with some of the bank executives who were pushing for a ban on “assault weapons,” he found that they didn’t understand the gun issue.

“At least one of those banks that came out with one of those oh so brave letters, when I sat down with their leadership and asked them about it, the people who wrote the letter didn’t know the first thing about the substance,” he said.

On the new letter, he added, “I promise you, the people signing this letter, don’t know any of the details of background checks or red flags.”

Instead, he said, the letter “is about social signaling.”

Still, Cruz, who met with actress and gun control advocate Alyssa Milano this week, said that there is a need for Congress to act, and he suggested that legislation he and Sen. Chuck Grassley are sponsoring to improve background checks is the best place to start.

“When it comes to guns, let me be absolutely clear, yes, Congress needs to act,” he said.

But he said extreme liberal calls for gun bans and gun grabs are not the place to start.