On Tuesday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) hammered Democrats for their push on gun control following the latest mass shooting, this time in Boulder, Colorado. Cruz followed Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who accused Republicans of having no solutions on the issue. Cruz stated, “Every time there’s a shooting, we play this ridiculous theater where this committee gets together and proposes a bunch of laws that would do nothing to stop these murders.”
Cruz pointed out that he and GOP Senator Charles Grassley had introduced the Grassley-Cruz amendment in 2013 that could have prevented some shootings, then noted the Democrats had filibustered the bill so it could not pass.
“The senator from Connecticut just said, ‘It’s time for us to do something,” Cruz stated. “I agree; it’s time for us to do something. And every time there’s a shooting, we play this ridiculous theater where this committee gets together and proposes a bunch of laws that would do nothing to stop these murders. The senator from Connecticut just said the folks on the other side of the aisle have no solutions. Well, the senator from Connecticut knows that is false. And he knows that’s false because Senator Grassley and I together introduced legislation, Grassley-Cruz, that targeted at violent criminals, targeted at felons, targeted at fugitives, targeted at those with serious mental disease, to stop them from getting firearms, to put them in prison when they try to illegally buy guns.”
“What happens in this committee after every mass shooting is Democrats propose taking away guns from law-abiding citizens because that’s their political objective,” Cruz continued. “But what they propose, not only does it not reduce crime, it makes it worse. The jurisdictions in this country with the strictest gun control have among the highest rates of crime and murder. When you disarm law-abiding citizens you make them more likely to be victims.”
“If you want to stop these murders, go after the murderers,” Cruz argued. “Grassley-Cruz came to a vote on the floor of the Senate in 2013. It got a majority of the vote on the floor of the Senate; 52 senators voted for Grassley-Cruz in the Harry Reid Democratic Senate. Nine Democratic senators voted for Grassley-Cruz, the most bipartisan support of any of the comprehensive legislation. So why didn’t it pass into law? Because Democratic senators, including many of the senators in this room, including the senator from Connecticut who just said Republicans have no answers, filibustered the law and prevented it from passing, demanded 60 votes.”
“If Grassley-Cruz had passed into law, Sutherland Springs very likely would not have happened,” he surmised. “Why is that? Because the shooter there, the murderer there, had a conviction in the Air Force that the Obama Air Force failed to report to the background check system and Grassley-Cruz mandated an audit of all of the convictions to make sure the background check data base has those felonies in it. Not only that, Grassley-Cruz mandated that when a felon illegally tries to buy a firearm, the Department of Justice prosecute them.”
“The Department of Justice has a long, and I think, indefensible practice of not prosecuting felons and fugitives who try to illegally buy guns,” Cruz charged. “If Grassley-Cruz had passed, the gun crimes task force that created would have charged prosecutors with going after gun criminals, and putting them in prison. That’s how we prevent these. And we will learn in the coming days and weeks the exact motivation of the murderers in Atlanta and Boulder, Colorado; we’ll learn what happened there. But we already know this pattern is predictable, over and over and over again there are steps we can take to stop these crimes. And you know what the steps aren’t? The steps aren’t disarming law-abiding citizens.”
“Every year firearms are used in a defensive capacity to defend women, children, families, roughly a million times a year in the United States. And the Democrats who want to take away the guns from those potential victims would create more victims of crimes, not less,” Cruz added. “…By the way, I don’t apologize for thoughts or prayers; I will lift up in prayer people who are hurting and I believe in the power of prayer, and the contempt of Democrats for prayers is an odd sociological phenomenon.
“But I also agree thoughts and prayers alone are not enough. We need action,” Cruz concluded. “Today, Chairman Grassley and I are again introducing Grassley-Cruz and I would ask Senate Democrats, including some of our newer colleagues who just got here, not to participate again in the shameful filibuster that this body engaged in 2013. Let’s target the bad guys, the felons, the fugitives, those with mental disease, let’s put them in jail; let’s stop them from getting guns; let’s not scapegoat innocent law-abiding citizens and let’s not target their constitutional rights.”