Ted Cruz (4:05)

Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles. Senator, everyone is debating not, not just the horrific incident that happened in Uvalde, the shooting at this elementary school, but it seems like from the very second that this happened, you had demagogues pushing their own pre existing political agenda and yelling and saying do something, do something, and mocking and deriding anyone who suggested that we ought to pray about this and we ought to let people grieve and mourn. And you have not just been observing this from afar, you have been down in Uvalde. What have you seen?

Unnamed Law Enforcement Official (4:45)

Yesterday morning I flew into Uvalde. I went first to meet with the local leaders in law enforcement, met with a mayor Met with a county judge, met with a sheriff who's absolutely distraught. Met with Texas DPS and the FBI, the district attorney's office and the superintendent of the school board and the chief of the school police. And we started the day with about a two hour briefing of what we knew. At that point, you know, what we know is evolving. We know more today than we knew yesterday. But the shooter, 18 years old, as you know, in the morning, got up and shot his grandmother in the face. And then he got in a car, a truck, actually, her truck, and drove the truck just down the street. So her house is just a couple of blocks from the school. So he didn't go very far, and he crashed the truck into a drainage ditch, and. Drainage ditch goes down about six, eight feet. And I saw. I was at the school yesterday. I saw the truck, which is still down in the drainage ditch. He had gone through a fence and down into the ditch and crashed there. Broken the tires off the axles. And then he got out of the truck and it was right next to the elementary school. And he went into the elementary school. And the facts are still unfolding about when exactly law enforcement encountered him. What we were told yesterday appears to be different from what the facts are today. But he entered the back door of the elementary school, and it was a door that's right next to the teacher's parking lot. And by all appearances, that back door was unlocked. And he walked directly into it. He walked into it carrying a gun. He went down the hallway and entered a classroom. It was a fourth grade classroom. That classroom was adjoining to another classroom. So there were two classrooms that were adjoining, connected by a door in between. And he terrorized those children and executed those children. And law enforcement arrived. What they're saying Today, what, what DPS has said today is that law enforcement arrived 12 minutes after he crashed the truck into that ditch, and he barricaded himself into that classroom. And a gunfight ensued. That gunfight lasted sometime anywhere between 40 minutes and an hour. And when I met with the FBI and law enforcement, they were reviewing the footage and they're trying to set the precise timeline, but it was an extended. It was a protracted gunfight. Three law enforcement officers were wounded, although thankfully, none of them were seriously wounded. And I gotta say, all day yesterday, from meeting with the first responders, to going to the school, to seeing the wreckage firsthand, to going last night to a prayer vigil, you know, the community had a prayer vigil. And it was packed. It was inside this big indoor barn where they have Bull riding and they have rodeos there. You know, Uvalde is a small town. It's in South Texas, Texas. It's a pretty rural town. It's outside of San Antonio, but it's not a big city, it's not a big suburb. It is a small South Texas town and the community is just shattered. The grief, the agony. You could see, you could see parents just in tears, wailing. You could see grandparents, you could see students, high school students walking in with just this look of sort of glazed shock.

Ted Cruz (9:04)

You know, this was the first school shooting since I became a parent. And obviously there have been lots in my lifetime when I was a kid, starting with Columbine and then so many others, unfortunately, that have occurred. But this was the first one since I became a parent. And I didn't get it before I was a parent. And you would always hear people say, you're hugging your kid closer tonight. This is the worst thing you could possibly imagine. And I always thought, obviously this is incredibly tragic, but what does that mean you hug your kid closer? Because if you are a parent, you think this is the singular horror that you can imagine. And it is in part my reaction just to the, the politics of it and the coverage in the media was a little different this time. I thought, can you let people mourn a little bit? Can you let people grieve a little bit? Can you just give it two seconds before this has to become some national debate on anyone's pet project?

Unnamed Law Enforcement Official (9:59)

And I gotta tell you, it's frustrating for me, cuz this is not the first time I've been on the ground where some psychopath has carried out an act of mass murder. I've represented Texas for 10 years and we've had way too many of these. Santa Fe High School is less than an hour outside of Houston. When that lunatic began murdering high school kids there I was at home. I got a call at home. I jumped in a truck and headed down to Santa Fe. I was there within an hour of when the shooting happened. Sutherland Springs is another small town, rural town outside of San Antonio. Worst church shooting in US History. I was there the day after Sutherland Springs. I was in that beautiful little sanctuary when there was still blood and shattered glass, shattered iPhones, pews thrown in chaos as that lunatic executed people. Including that lunatic executed a child that was 18 months old. He shot and murdered. I was there in Midland, Odessa with another mass murderer. There I was there in El Paso, Texas with another mass murderer. There I was in Dallas with another mass murderer who targeted police officers. There are broader causes that we can and should discuss, causes that we've seen. Whether it's the destruction of the nuclear family, whether it is the loss of strong and loving father figures in families. Many if not most of these murderers come from a home without a strong and loving father. Whether it is the deterioration of faith and community in a church life. And it seems almost all of these people are detached from their community. And there are lots of things that have nothing to do with government and policy that have led to angry teenage boys being filled with murderous rage.

Ted Cruz (12:02)

But what your political opponents are gonna say is they're gonna say, well, okay, yeah, enough, we'll do something about it. And I almost, I mean, I guess now there is this national debate going on. And so it's been a couple days after this shooting and people are just gonna be debating all of these policies. But it seems almost tired at this point to recite the same old litany because it's the same old debate every time. But the do something is not enough. And the proposals that have been made are by the Democrats almost exclusively to regulate guns. None of them would have prevented any of these mass shootings. Even the Washington Post admitted that when Marco Rubio said it in 2015. Even the Post fact checker had to admit that that point was right. Then you get onto other proposals that could possibly even be made here. What would that be? To ban guns entirely. Well, you're gonna run up against a constitutional problem, a practical problem. There are more guns than people in this country. There's no political will whatsoever to ban guns. And there's not a lot of that. Banning guns would reduce the murder rate. When they banned handguns in the uk, the murder rate increased significantly. It almost doubled in about six years. So it's the same old litany of issues. And I think this is why the people who criticize thoughts and prayers and the people who say, well, do something, do something. It's why they don't tend to get very specific because they don't have any more of an answer on what to do than anybody else does. They're just demagoguing the issue and pretending that they're sympathetic. Outrage is somehow productive.

Unnamed Law Enforcement Official (13:33)

So let's assess, how do we stop these? Inevitably, when there's a mass murder, within seconds, Democrats in the media begin calling for the exact same policies they were calling for the day before. Which their objective, and more and more the left is quite candid about it, is to disarm law abiding citizens throughout this country to take away your firearms My firearms and those of law abiding citizens. There are many problems with that, but let's just start with a basic one. It doesn't work. Taking away every firearm that Michael Knowles owns would not have stopped this psychopath from murdering children in Uvalde. And by the way, we see that in Chicago and New York and D.C. and California, where they have very strict gun control and the criminals still have guns and still carry out murders. If you could wave a magic wand and eliminate all firearms in America, there would be substantially more murders than there are today. I'll give you a statistic from the Obama White House. Now, the Obama White House is hardly a right wing source. Here's what the Obama White House concluded is that firearms are used in the United states defensively between 500,000 and 1 million times per year used to stop the commission of a crime. So if the left succeeds in taking away everyone's firearms, all of the instances, now that doesn't mean that there are between 500,000 and a million gunfights. Many, many times firearms are used to stop a robbery, to stop an attempted murderer, to stop a kidnapping where the gun isn't fired. But simply brandishing the gun causes the criminal to abandon the criminal effort. And that happens, according to the Obama White House, between 500,000 and a million times a year. So eliminating all firearms, I believe would cause far more loss of life because it would mean that criminals would be able to maraud, would be able to commit assaults and not be worried about people defending themselves. And by the way, the data, if you look at the jurisdictions with the strictest gun controls, almost without exception, they have among the highest crime rates and the highest murder rates and places with lower rates of gun control. In other words, with more widespread firearms among the citizenry, you have typically much lower crime rates, much lower murder rates. But let's not skip this question. Is there something we can do to stop these? And I believe the answer is yes. When I first arrived in the Senate, I got elected in 2012, just after I arrived Sandy Hook, the horrific school shooting in Connecticut occurred. And so we had this debate 10 years ago. And when I looked at it, I said, then we need to do something. What do we need to do? Let's get the guns out of the hands of the violent criminals, the felons and fugitives, and those with serious mental illness. And so I authored legislation. It was called Grassley Cruz, Grassley Crews was legislation targeting the bad guys. And so one of the things it did is it improved the background check system. If you look at, we have a background check. So if you or I go buy a gun, you gotta run a background check. It runs the check to see if you have a felony conviction. That database is only as good as the information in it. And a lot of the federal government has been lousy at reporting felony convictions to the database. And a lot of states, interestingly enough, many of them blue states, have terrible records reporting the felonies to the background check database. If you look at Sutherland Springs, which was the church shooting in Texas, in that instance, that crime should have been prevented. Why? Because the shooter there, it was already illegal for him to buy a firearm. He was a felon, and he had domestic violence conviction, so it was doubly illegal. So why was he able to buy his firearm? Well, the reason is because that the Obama Air Force never reported the conviction to the background check database. So he went into a gun store to buy his gun. He filled out the background check form, and he lied. He was asked, do you have a felony conviction? He checked the box and said no. He was asked, do you have a domestic violence conviction? He checked the box and said no. They ran the background check. And because the federal government, the Obama administration, never reported his felony conviction to the database, the background check came up clean, and they sold him the firearm. So one of the things Grassley Cruz did is mandated the federal government, the Department of Justice, to do an audit of every federal agency to ensure that all felony convictions were in the database. It also provided funds for states to do the same thing for state convictions. But beyond that, every year, there's a vast number of felons and fugitives who try to illegally buy firearms. The Department of Justice prosecutes almost none of them. In fact. I'll give you the stats from 2010, which was the last year. There were stats from before. When I drafted Grassley Cruz, in that year, there were 48,000 felons and fugitives who tried to illegally buy firearms. 48,000 of those, do you know how many the Department of Justice prosecuted? 44. And by the way, that continues to this day, the Biden Justice Department still is not prosecuting felons and fugitives who try to illegally buy firearms. Grassley Cruz mandated the creation of a gun crime task force at the Department of Justice to go and prosecute and put in jail felons and fugitives who illegally buy firearms. Now, what happened to Grassley Cruz? We voted on the Senate floor on that bill. It got a majority. It got 52 votes in favor of it. Nine Democrats voted in Favor of Grassley. Cruz got the most bipartisan support of any of the comprehensive legislation that was voted on. So why didn't it pass? Well, it was the Harry Reid, Democrat Senate, and the Democrats filibustered it. They demanded 60 votes. So even though I had 52 votes, we didn't have 60. And so it failed because Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer and the Democrats filibustered it.

Ted Cruz (20:03)

They're not really focused on this issue. Right. They're focused on pushing the same legislation that they've wanted to push for decades now, and they'll use any circumstance to try to push that. But what we're seeing here in the specifics of this actual shooting is in some ways, it seems like it's a repeat of the Parkland shooting. You've got a kid who was showing serious signs of trouble. He should have been identified much sooner. There should have been safeguards placed around this kid much, much sooner. There are now questions about when law enforcement got there, if law enforcement did enough in the moment. You're seeing, I'm not saying it's a repeat of history, but you're seeing lots and lots of similarities, none of which are addressed by the legislation that the Democrats are proposing.

Unnamed Law Enforcement Official (20:44)

I sat down and participated in roundtables with the families of the victims who were murdered in Santa Fe, and it included families who were in Parkland, families who were in other mass shootings. And we talked about, how do you prevent them? And as you talk to security experts, one of the things they said is for schools. Many schools are very, very vulnerable. And there are concrete steps we can take to harden schools and make them safer. And in particular, here's what the experts have recommended. They've said, you don't want multiple means of entering the school. You don't want lots and lots of open doors. If you look at how the shooter got in in Uvalde, he went into a back door that was unlocked. That's exactly how the shooter went in. In Santa Fe, a back door that was unlocked, he was able to get in, and then he was able to get right into a classroom. Same thing in Santa Fe. So twice the same thing happened. What the recommendations were is have a single point of entry for the school, one door that everyone comes through. If you think about it, a secure facility, a courthouse, a federal building, they often have a single point of entry, because from a security perspective, that's much safer at that point of entry. The single most effective security step you can take is to have armed police officers. They're at that Point of entry that has a greater impact on keeping kids safe than just about anything else you can do on on school safety. Funding for school safety should be a no brainer. There's not a single Democrat who opposes it on, on principle. But every time I've tried to force a vote on it, Schumer has blocked it because his view is if he can't take away law abiding citizens guns, he's not willing to do anything. I hope after this that changes. But you know, part of the problem, Michael, the press are active advocates and partisans. I've never seen one Democrat asked why they vote against in filibuster. School safety funding funds for police officers in schools, funds to put bulletproof doors and bulletproof glass in classrooms and locks that an assailant can't enter the classroom. If this guy had entered the school and the school classrooms had been locked and he couldn't get in, he couldn't have murdered these children. Last night when I was at the prayer vigil, there was this British reporter this kind of, you know, ran and chased me and stuck his TV camera in my face and I'm walking out of the door and first he asked me about what we were seeing there and I said, look, this is horrific. There are 19 sets of parents who are not going to be able to hug their child tonight or see their child. And it is, it's the most unspeakable evil we could imagine. And he immediately jumped into, well, don't we need to pass gun control? And I didn't want to argue with this guy. And I'm disengaging. He's a British guy who was an obnoxious leftist and he's like, why does this only happen in America? Doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. It's only America. Why is American exceptionalism so horrible? The premise of his question is factually false. And I actually Newsweek just published something which I'll point out, I'm quoting from Newsweek that says since 1988 there have been a total of nine attacks similar to the Robb Elementary School shooting. Nine is nine too many. But once you adjust for population, there are many other countries from Germany to Russia to Finland that have comparable rates of school shootings. And in fact it goes in and it breaks down. According to a Crime Prevention Research center report from 2020, and this is a quote, the US is well below the world average in terms of the number of mass public shootings. And the global increase over time has been much bigger than, than for the United States. And it goes on to say that by our count, the US makes up less than 1.13% of the mass public shooters, 1.77% of the murders, and 2.19% of their attacks. All of these are much less than the United States is 4.6% share of world population. And it goes on to say again, this is a quote. Out of the 101 countries where we have identified mass public shootings occurring, the United States ranks 66th in per capita frequency of these attacks and 56th in the murder rate. And on this issue in particular, the press is so wildly dishonest that I understand why people at home don't understand what to do about it. Most people at home don't know that there are laws we could pass that would stop felons and fugitives from illegally buying guns and put them in jail. But the Democrats are blocking them. Most people don't know that. Most people don't know that the Democrats have been blocking more funding for school safety for years and the press will not report it. And that's why things like this podcast, I think matter.

Ted Cruz (26:09)

If this show and other shows like it can do nothing else beyond break up what is an extremely dishonest, uniform narrative that could be politically quite productive. Now, this isn't the only venue on which you can discuss these sorts of things. As you know, you, Senator, and you, all of you out there in podcast land, there is another series where you can go even further if you are a Verdict plus subscriber. That is the Cloakroom with Liz Wheeler. Liz, what will you be talking about?

Liz Wheeler (26:38)

Hi, Senator. Hi, Michael. Unfortunately, we have to talk about Beto O'Rourke's shameful stunt at the press conference. Senator, you were there at the press conference when Beto interrupted Governor Greg Abbott. We're gonna talk a little bit about that. We're also gonna talk about the police response, or lack thereof to this shooting. What happened, what went wrong, what could have been done, what should have been done that could have potentially saved the lives of these children. Please join us for this important conversation on Verdict. You can go to Verdict with TedCruz.com plus for this special episode of the Cloakroom.

Ted Cruz (27:10)

There is lots more coming up on the Cloakroom and of course, on the next episode of Verdict. So make sure to get your mailbag questions in. Senator, thank you very much. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

Michael Knowles (27:29)

This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security pac, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations and candidates across the country in 2022. Jobs, freedom and Security PAC plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.