Republican Representative Matt Schaefer is stirring up mixed emotions after his social media comments on gun rights.

In part Schaefer explained that he would not support “Red Flag” pre-crime laws, universal background checks, and bans on AR-15s or high capacity magazines.

He promised to pray for victims, pray for protection, and pray that God would transform the hearts of people with evil intent. Finishing his tweets by saying “yes to God, no to more government intrusions”.

Many online agreed and praised Schaefer, while some celebrities and gun activists called out the Texas Rep to do something besides pray and one even summed up his tweets by saying he was essentially for more killings.

“I would say how’s that working out for us,” asked Michael Tolbert, Smith County Democratic Party. ” We’ve had, I believe three of the deadliest shootings in the country, right here in Texas within the past few years. Texas is a state with people with very strong faith, yet we also need to make some good decisions and we need our representatives to act on our behalf to do those things.”

Representative Schaefer says that’s exactly what he’s doing. He says the message he was trying to spread is one he believes spans across the minds of East Texans and beyond.

“An evil person with the intent to harm someone can find any tool that they want to,” said Schaefer. “Talking about guns doesn’t really get to the root cause, we have to look at people’s hearts and what’s going on in our communities, what’s going on in our societies. Those are hard discussions, harder to talk about than it is to just say oh, let’s get the legislature to pass a law.”

Make sure to check out his full interview with KETK below…