On Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Washington politicians should not take advantage of recent tragedies to pass aggressive gun control laws, especially since "real assault weapons" have been illegal since 1934.

Cruz was responding to the bill Sen. Diane Feinstein's (D-CA) introduced on Thursday that would target shotguns and handguns in the name of banning "assault weapons."

Feinstein, in introducing the bill, invoked the Sandy Hook tragedy, saying, "If 20 dead children in Newtown wasn’t a wakeup call that these weapons of war don’t belong on our streets, I don’t know what is.”

"Washington politicians shouldn’t be taking advantage of recent tragedy to try to push an aggressive gun control agenda," Cruz said. "Real assault weapons — machine guns — are already functionally illegal, and they have been since 1934."

Cruz noted Feinstein's "proposal would have done nothing to prevent the terrible murders in Newtown, but it would limit the constitutional liberties of law-abiding citizens."

"And gun control doesn’t work – the empirical data overwhelmingly demonstrate that strict gun-control laws consistently produce more crime and more murders," Cruz added. "The Second Amendment exists to ensure that law-abiding Americans can protect their homes and families, and I look forward to helping lead the fight to defeat this bill and to protect our constitutional right to keep and bear arms."