Cory Booker escalates NRA attacks during town hall, vows to 'bring a fight': 'I'm tired of going to funerals'

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said he would "bring a fight like the NRA has never seen" during a CNN town hall that aired Wednesday, as he accused the National Rifle Association of trying to protect the ability of gun manufacturers to sell weapons to violent and dangerous criminals, Fox News reported.

Booker, a contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, said the NRA does not represent its members.

"I am tired of going to funerals where parents are burying their children and so I am gonna bring a fight — we are gonna bring a fight like the NRA has never seen if they're going to defend corporate gun manufacturers more than represent us people," Booker said.

The New Jersey Democrat took a tone similar to that of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who is also running for president and who recently hammered home a claim that gun manufacturers want to sell guns to people on terrorist watch lists.

"[The NRA] is defending loopholes, like that loophole that if a man is convicted of beating his wife, he can find a loophole to go out and buy a gun and murder her," Booker said. "Like the loophole that says someone on the terrorist no-fly list in our country can still go to a gun show and buy a weapon."

NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch pushed back on Booker's passionate, but inaccurate, claims.

"Not a word uttered by @CoryBooker here is correct," Loesch wrote on Twitter.

Still, the anti-NRA narrative has an impact on the voters Booker is seeking, so he is not deterred by factual pushback, responding to Loesch that "the NRA needs to go."

"Another point here," Loesch wrote. "What does 'The NRA has to go' even mean? This is a group of several million law-abiding Americans, Senator. You want to stifle our speech? Our assembly? Please explain."