Do Something

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Or if you prefer texting, you can text the word cactus to six five five three two again, the phone number is eight five fives sixty eight eight three, or text the word cactus to six five three two. Welcome back to Verdings with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles, Senator. Everyone is debating, not just the horrific incident that happened

in Uvaldi, 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. You have not just been observing this from Afar. You've been down in Uvaldi. What have you seen Yesterday morning?

I flew into Yuvaldi. 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 TEXASDPS 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, eighteen 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 the drainage ditch goes down about six to eight feed 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,

was a fourth grade classroom. That classroom was adjoining to another classroom, so there were two classrooms that were joining, 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 DPS has said today, is that law enforcement arrived twelve minutes after he crashed the truck into that ditch, and he barricaded himself into that classroom

and a gunfight ensued. That gunfight lasted some time anywhere between forty 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 got to say all day yesterday, from meeting with the first responders, to going to the school, UH, 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 this UH big indoor barn where they have bull riding and they have rodeos there. You know, Vivaldi is a small town.

It's in South Texas. It's it's a pretty rural town. Um, it's outside of San Antonio, but it's it's 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. Is the grief, the agony. You could see. You could see parents just just in tears, whaling. You could see grandparents, You could see students, high school dudents walking in with

just this look of a sort of glazed shock. 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, so many others unfortunately that have occurred. But this was the first one since I became a parent, and I I didn't get it. Yeah, Before I was a parent and I you would always hear people say, you're hugging your kid closer tonight. This is the worst thing you

could possibly imagine. I always thought, obviously, this is incredibly tragic, but what does that mean. You hug your kid closer because you just if you, if you are a parent, you just you think this is this is the singular horror that you can imagine, and it is in part why my reaction just to the politics of it and the coverage in the media was a little different this time. I thought, you can you let people more in 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. And I to tell you it's it's frustrating for me because this is not the first time I've been on the ground where some psychopath has carried out unactive mass murder. I've represented Texas for ten 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, there's 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 eighteen 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 and 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. But what your political opponents are going to say is they're going to 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 going to 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. In the proposals that have been made 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 twenty fifteen, 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 going to 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 evidence that banning guns would reduce the murder rate. When they banned handguns in the UK, the murder rate increased significantly, almost doubled in about six years. So it's it's the same old litany of issues, and I think I think this is why the people who criticize thoughts and prayers and the people who say will

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 demogoguing the issue and pretending that their sympathetic outrage is somehow productive. So let's assess how do we stop these? Inevitably, when there's a mass murder, within seconds, democrats and the media begin calling for the exact same policies they were calling for the day before, which which

they're 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, by firearms and those of law fighting 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 Uvaldi. And by the way, we see that in Chicago and New York and DC, in 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 five hundred thousand and one million times per year, used to stop the commission of a crime. So if the Left succeeds and taking away everyone's firearms all of the instances, now, that doesn't mean that there are between five hundred thousand and a million

gun fights. Many many times firearms are used to stop a robbery, to stop and attempted murderers, 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 five

hundred thousand 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 an 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 twenty twelve. Just after I arrived, Sandy Hook, the horrific school shooting in Connecticut occurred, and so we had this debate ten 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 Grassly Cruise. Grassly Cruise was legislation targeting

the bad guys. And so one of the things it did, is it improve the background check system. If you look at we have a background check, so if you or I go by a gun, you got to 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. 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 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 live. 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 in 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 Grassly Crews 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 twenty ten, which was the last year there were stats from before when I drafted Grassly Cruse. In that year, there were forty eight thousand felons and fugitives who tried to illegally buy firearms. Forty eight thousand of those. Do you know how many the Department of Justice prosecute forty four 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. Grassly CRUs 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 fifty two votes in favor of it. Nine Democrats voted in favor of Grassly Cruise 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 Democrats Senate, and the Democrats filibustered it. They demanded sixty votes. So even though I had fifty two votes, we didn't have sixty, and so it failed. Becau as Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer and the Democrats filibuster did. 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 you're addressed by the legislation

that the Democrats are proposing. I sat down and participated in round tables 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 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. 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 Uvality, he went into a backdoor that was unlocked. That's exactly how the shooter went in in Santa Fe. A backdoor 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 much safer at that point of entry. The single most effective security step you can take is to have armed police officers there

at that point of entry. That has a greater impact on keeping kids safe than just about anything else you can do on school safety. Funding for school safety should be a no brainer. There's not a single Democrat who opposes it 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 filibusters school safety funding funds for police officers in schools, funds to put bulletproof doors and bulletproof glass and 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 this kind of you know, ran and chase me and stuck his TV camera in my face and I'm walking out of the door. And the first he asked me about what we were seeing there, and I said, look, this is horrific. This is their nineteen 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 what 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 which I'll point out. I'm quoting from Newsweek that says since nineteen eighty eight, there have been a total of nine attacks similar to the rob 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 twenty twenty, 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 for the United States. And it goes on to say that by our account, the US makes up less than one point one three percent of the mass public shooters, one point seven seven percent of the murders, and two point one nine percent

of their attacks. All of these are much less than the United States is four point six percent share of world population. And it goes on to say, again, this is a quote out of the one hundred and one countries where we have identified mass public shootings occurring, the United States ranks sixty sixth in per capita frequency of these attacks and fifty sixth 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 their laws we could pass that would stop felons and fugitives from illegally buying guns and put them in jail, but the Democrats are blocking that. Most people don't know that. Most people don't know 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 matters. If this show and other shows like it can do nothing else beyond breakup what is an extremely dishonest uniform narrative that could be politically quite productive. Now this is 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 Cloak Room with Liz Wheeler. Liz, what will you be talking about, Hi, Senator Hi, Michael. Unfortunately we have to talk about Betto O'Rourke's shameful stunt at the press conference. Senator, you were there at press conference when Betto interrupted Governor Greg Abbott. We're going to talk a little bit about that. We're also going to 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 Plus. You can go to Verdict with Ted Cruise dot com slash plus for this special episode of The Cloakroom. There is lots more coming up on The Cloakroom and of course on the next episode of Verdict, so make sure to get your mail back,

questions and Senator, thank you very much. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.