Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has stepped up his game with the attention-grabbing antics.

"Machine gun bacon," he calls it.

A promotional video was released on Monday showing the senator and Republican presidential candidate cooking a slice of bacon on the barrel of an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

"There are few things I enjoy more than on weekends cooking breakfast with the family," Cruz says at the start of the film, which was published on conservative website IJReview. "Of course in Texas we cook bacon a little differently than most folks."

Funny enough, many have already pointed out that the AR-15 isn't a machine gun, so in his attempt to reach the pro-gun crowd, he's somehow insulted them as well. It appears the meat in question is, in fact, real pork bacon and not tofu or seitan. Pro-pork folks rejoice.

Cruz isn't the brainchild of this ultra-American stunt either. (Cruz was actually born in Canada, as many Texans have rigorously reminded viewers of in the comments section of the video.) But the point is, scads of gun-and-bacon enthusiasts have done this same pony trick before.

Lastly, in a country with more than 30,000 gun-related deaths per year, critics have rightly slammed Cruz since the video's Monday release. Simply put: no es una buena idea. Even a representative from gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson advised against it.

"We certainly wouldn’t recommend you cooking bacon on that," the company rep told the Guardian. "I don’t think the gun is designed to cook bacon."