Cornyn, 70, the state’s senior senator, had been scheduled to communicate at Friday’s NRA annual assembly in Houston. He pulled out forward of the capturing for private causes requiring him to be in Washington, a spokesperson stated.
Cruz, 51, goes forward with plans to communicate on the occasion Friday. In an interview with an area CBS reporter in Uvalde this week, Cruz stated he’ll attend as a result of Democrats and the press are “trying to demonize law-abiding gun owners” and “demonize the NRA.”
One day earlier, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had tapped Cornyn to negotiate with Democrats on attainable however not possible gun laws, deputizing the previous member of Senate GOP management.
“Maybe this will provide some impetus” for compromise, Cornyn instructed reporters on the Capitol on Thursday. “This is horrible. Hard to imagine anything that could be worse than parents worrying about the safety of their kids going to school.”
Cruz, in the meantime, was making worldwide headlines for storming away from a British journalist after being requested why mass shootings happen “only in America.” The trade occurred as Cruz was attending a vigil in Texas for the 19 kids and two adults killed in the massacre.
Pressed on restrictions on weapons, Cruz stated this week: “That doesn’t work. It’s not effective. It doesn’t prevent crime.”
After mass shootings in earlier years, each Cruz and Cornyn have issued statements which have nearly at all times omitted the point out of weapons But Cornyn — a former Texas legal professional common and state Supreme Court justice who has lengthy courted and loved robust assist from gun rights organizations — has in the previous been open to working throughout the aisle on sure gun-related laws.
Cornyn is the lead creator of the invoice that the NRA considers to be one in all its most necessary congressional priorities — the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which might enable gun homeowners who’re permitted to carry a hid weapon in their very own state to achieve this in another state, as effectively.
While gun-rights supporters say the invoice is important to maintain gun homeowners innocent from a patchwork of various state legal guidelines, supporters of gun management argue that the invoice would successfully intestine state legal guidelines limiting hid carry.
Still, Cornyn has been a frequent and prepared interlocutor for Democrats on potential gun compromises. He was, in reality, the architect of the one remotely vital gun-related laws to emerge from the Senate in the previous decade, 2018′s Fix NICS Act.
In November 2017, a former Air Force airman opened hearth at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., killing greater than two dozen folks. The Air Force got here underneath scrutiny after it was found that the gunman, Devin Patrick Kelley, had been convicted of home assault however that the navy had by no means reported that conviction to the FBI for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, as was required. If they’d finished so, Kelley wouldn’t have been ready to cross a background verify and certain “would have been deterred from carrying out the Church shooting,” a federal decide wrote final yr.
In the months after the Sutherland Springs capturing, Cornyn teamed up with Democratic Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, each of Connecticut, to craft and push the Fix NICS invoice to reinforce that reporting requirement to the FBI’s background verify system and to create monetary incentives for states to achieve this. Then-President Donald Trump signed the invoice into regulation in March 2018.
The invoice was fastidiously written and messaged as a strengthening of present regulation, not an growth of it.
Murphy stated when it was launched that “much more needs to be done” however that the invoice “represents the strongest update to the background checks system in a decade and provides the foundation for more compromise in the future.”
While some hard-line teams akin to Gun Owners of America got here out strongly towards the invoice, the NRA quietly supported it, noting that it will “not add any new disqualifications to federal law” and was “concerned entirely with enforcing the current prohibitions.”
“After the tragedy in Sutherland Springs, I vowed to that community to do what I could so no family, school, or congregation would have to go through that again,” Cornyn stated in an announcement on the time. “While it’s not the only solution, I’m confident this bill will save lives. I’m grateful for the many advocates and families affected by gun violence who came together behind this effort to finally fix and strengthen the criminal background check system.”
It wouldn’t, nonetheless, be the final time a household, school or congregation in Texas would undergo by way of a mass capturing. Less than two months later, in May 2018, a 17-year-old pupil with a shotgun and a pistol went on a rampage at Santa Fe High School, outdoors Houston, killing eight college students and two lecturers. And in August 2019, a gunman who later stated he was concentrating on “Mexicans” drove to El Paso and opened hearth in a Walmart, killing 23 folks.
Cornyn was a key backer of one other invoice aimed toward federal background checks, which might require the Justice Department to notify native regulation enforcement of a failed background verify inside 24 hours for additional investigation. That measure attracted bipartisan co-sponsors and was included in the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization invoice that President Biden signed into regulation in March.
But one other latest effort, launched final yr after Democrats received the Senate majority and threatened to cross extra expansive gun management payments, didn’t pan out.
It was aimed toward increasing the universe of federal background checks by clarifying the definition of who’s required to register as a federal firearms supplier and thus course of background checks. This would go a way towards closing what’s steadily known as the “gun show loophole” or “private seller loophole” that has been exploited by some mass shooters, such because the gunman who carried out a 2019 killing of six folks in West Texas.
Cornyn and Murphy engaged on the subject in March 2021 and expressed optimism {that a} deal was in sight. But some gun rights teams instructed their members that Cornyn was making ready to promote them out behind closed doorways.
“If John Cornyn, who represents the state of TEXAS, is already considering stabbing gun owners in the back, then you know that we’re truly in a DIRE situation,” one electronic mail from Gun Owners of America learn.
By June, Murphy instructed reporters {that a} deal merely was not going to come collectively: What Cornyn was prepared to give on wouldn’t “meaningfully increase the number of gun sales that require background checks.” And so died the final vital bipartisan gun talks in the Senate — till this week.
“I’m not taking anything off the table except for denying people their constitutional rights who are law-abiding citizens,” Cornyn stated Thursday.
In distinction to Cornyn, Cruz has taken a extra combative method in the times for the reason that Uvalde massacre. The junior senator from Texas ran unsuccessfully for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016 and has hinted that he might pursue one other bid in 2024. Cornyn, the previous Senate Republican whip, was reelected in 2020 and has not signaled any ambitions past probably succeeding McConnell as Senate GOP chief sometime.
As Texas solicitor common in 2008, Cruz led 31 states in an amicus temporary opposing the District of Columbia’s handgun ban. And after becoming a member of the Senate in 2013, he steadily touted his efforts to oppose Democratic-led gun management proposals spurred by mass shootings.
Last yr, Cruz joined greater than two dozen House Republicans in asking the Biden administration to carry sanctions on ammunition imported from Russia, in accordance to a letter obtained by The Washington Post. The group accused the administration of utilizing the sanctions as a way to enact gun management measures and argued that it will exacerbate a scarcity of ammunition.
“Until we receive a response, we will have to presume that this ban is an attempt to restrict Americans’ right to bear arms — bypassing Congress to implement gun control,” they wrote.
On Wednesday, whereas attending a vigil for the Uvalde victims, Cruz upbraided a British journalist who had pressed him for solutions on why mass shootings are an issue in America.
“Why only in America? Why is this American exceptionalism so awful?” requested the journalist, Mark Stone of Britain’s Sky News.
“You know, I’m sorry you think American exceptionalism is awful,” Cruz responded. “You’ve got your political agenda. God love you.” He additionally accused Stone of being a “propagandist.”
Cruz’s workplace later defended the senator’s actions, arguing that “contrary to a reporter’s assertion that suggested mass shootings are a uniquely American problem, the data shows that is not accurate.”
“In addition to not being true, making that false argument isn’t actually helpful,” Cruz spokeswoman Maria Jeffrey Reynolds stated. She additionally pointed to laws Cruz has launched to reinforce school security and enhance background checks.
Cruz has additionally been one in all a number of Republicans to come underneath criticism for searching for to shift the main focus away from the variety of weapons in America to the variety of doorways at American colleges.
“You want to talk about the horror that played out across the street? Look, the killer entered here the same way the killer entered in Santa Fe — through a back door, an unlocked back door,” Cruz instructed reporters Wednesday outdoors Robb Elementary School.
He argued that future mass shootings might be prevented by having “one door that goes in and out of the school [and] having armed police officers at that door.”
Leigh Ann Caldwell, Adela Suliman and Timothy Bella contributed to this report.