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Editorial Board, Corpus Christi Caller-Times 4:34 p.m. CT May 30, 2017

The Texas Capitol is shown Monday, Jan. 8, 2007, in Austin, Texas. Passage of a state budget is the only thing the Legislature is required to do in its 140-day regular session that convenes Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2007. It is in the House Chamber where members will vote Tuesday, the opening day of the 80th Legislature, to either keep Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, or oust him in favor of a new leader. (AP Photo/Harry Cabluck)(Photo: Associated Press, AP)

Let one mean-spirited act on the last day of the Texas legislative session taking out a cell phone and threatening to sic immigration authorities on protesters speak for what's wrong with the so-called sanctuary cities law and us as a state and nation.

Let it also serve as a warning that maybe it's not such a bright idea to let any ol' yahoo carry a gun.

The actions of state Rep. Matt Rinaldi, R-Irving, should be remembered with disgust and embarrassment. Unfortunately, already he's a hero to some, perhaps many. And that's indicative of what's wrong with us as a people.

On Sunday, when protesters against Senate Bill 4, the sanctuary cities law, became loud, Rinaldi made a big show of taking out his cell phone to report them to immigration. Hispanic lawmakers who were nearby did not take kindly to it.

What ensued came close to getting physical, and Rinaldi was heard threatening to put a bullet in the head of state Rep. Poncho Nevarez, D-Eagle Pass.

Afterward, Rinaldi claimed that he had been jostled and threatened. And the office of Rep. Cesar Blanco, D-El Paso, received a call from a man who said "I stand with Matt Rinaldi and (expletive) all the illegal (racist label). White power."

Rinaldi unmasked SB 4 for what its critics have been saying it is mean-spiriteddiscrimination against Hispanics under the flimsy ruse of securing the border and preventing crime.

In that single, sarcastic, cold-hearted act of taking out his phone, Rinaldi contradicted what Gov. Greg Abbott said only a week earlier in an opinion column, co-signed by two border-area law enforcement officials, supposedly to set the record straight about what they claimed to be SB 4's true, benign nature.In thecolumn, published by the Caller-Times and other publications, the governor asserted that SB 4 had been misrepresented deliberately as a show-me-your-papers law that would encourage ethnic and racial profiling. Abbott asserted that SB 4 would do no such thing. Ethnic and racial profiling is illegal, Abbott wrote.

Then Rinaldi went and did exactly what Abbott said SB 4 wouldn't do. Dismissing Rinaldi as a lone wolf and a clown would be easy, predictable and politically expedient. But he did exactly what some if not many of his colleagues who supported SB 4 wished they had thought of in the moment.

Even if he werea lone aberration among the150 House members, which Texans know in their hearts he's not, that's still too many, mathematically. It would work out to three to four bad apples in Rinaldi's hometown police department, which has 542 employees. Common sense and experience say the vast majority of law enforcement officers are true professionals but the percentage of SB 4 abusers will outperform this math. Alot of unjustified hassling ofpeople who look like Nevarez and Blanco is in store.

Rinaldi's action deserved a response, but it didn't have to degenerate into an unseemly shoving match with death threats flying. In the not-so-distant past, a fair-complected, documented-looking conservative colleague or two of Rinaldi's would have stepped up quickly and rebuked him without further incident.

But nowadays, we have come to expect responses like the one received by Blanco's staff, from people who think Rinaldi did the right thing and who mislabel any rebuke of him as liberal politics.And we have come to wonder and worry how large a percentage of the population they represent.

And now we have a state representative who carries a gun and has threatened to put a bullet in the head of another state representative and who offers the George Zimmerman stand-your-ground doctrine as his defense. No telling how many of his colleagues will feel compelled now to arm themselves for protection from the likes of him. Rinaldi says on his web site that he's a proud concealed-carry permit holder who believes that his Second Amendment right is God-given. No matter who gave it, Rinaldi is one permit holder whose right should be revoked.

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Rep. Rinaldi showed what's wrong with SB 4, Texas and America - Corpus Christi Caller-Times