OXON HILL, Md. — Sen. Ted Cruz said Thursday he’s getting tired of the Democratic response to school shootings, which is always about taking way people’s gun rights.
“It is an amazing thing and it’s tiresome,” the Texas Republican told the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, eight days after the Florida high school shooting.
“Every time you see a horrific crime, people in the media and Democratic politicians immediately try to leap on it to advance their agenda, and their agenda is stripping the Second Amendment rights away from law abiding citizens,” Cruz said.
He spoke just hours after CNN’s town hall meeting on guns in Florida, which he dubbed a “CNN infomercial” to promote gun control. Just prior to his speech, Cruz hinted to reporters that he would not support raising the minimum age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21 and argued that gun control measures pushed by Democrats are not the answer to the problem.
“These acts of mass murder are evil,” the Texas Republican said about the incident. “The question is what more can we do to stop them.”
“Unfortunately, whenever there is a crime like this, Washington Democrats immediately try to use that crime to push their longstanding agenda of restricting the Second Amendment rights for law abiding citizens,” he added. “That doesn’t work. It doesn’t reduce crime.”
Trump has proposed banning the sale of rifles to anyone under 21 years old, boosting background checks, and banning bump stocks. But Cruz said the ideas being discussed are ineffective, and called for more security in schools and targeting violent criminals.
“What we ought to be doing instead … is target violent criminals,” Cruz said. “If you want to stop violent crime, you target murderers and violent criminals. You come down on them like a ton of bricks.”
Cruz called on the Senate to take up measures along the lines of the bill he and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, unveiled in 2013, which he said would have increased funding toward school safety by $300 million.
“Had that passed, that might have made a difference in Parkland,” Cruz said. “That might have meant an armed police officer would have been on that campus and could have stopped that crazed mad man before he murdered those teenaged kids.”
