On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox News @ Night,” Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) criticized Democrats for filibustering the Grassley-Cruz legislation in 2013 that “would have resulted in this shooter being in federal prison instead of murdering those innocents in that Texas church.”
Cruz said, “[T]his should have been stopped beforehand. Under federal law, it was illegal for this individual to purchase a firearm. He had a conviction for a crime that’s punishable by more than a year in prison, and he had a conviction for multiple domestic violence crimes. Both of those, it’s already ineligible. But, several things happened: Number one, the air force — the Obama administration didn’t report those convictions to the [NICS] database. That’s an endemic problem. It’s a problem with the federal government. It’s a problem with the states. And so, when he went in to buy the guns, they ran the background check, and they didn’t find it because it wasn’t in the database. But I’ll tell you we could have prevented this. In 2013, in the wake of Sandy Hook, I joined with Chuck Grassley, we introduced legislation that was called the Grassley-Cruz legislation. And it was aggressive legislation targeting felons and violent criminals to stop them from getting guns.”
He continued, “There were a couple elements of that legislation that were critical: One, it mandated that federal agencies, including the Air Force, report to the [NICS] because that was a problem back then. But, two, and this is an even more critical piece, if it had been reported to the background database, when he went into Academy to buy this — these weapons, he lied on the forms. That is a felony to lie on those forms. The Obama administration didn’t prosecute those cases. In 2010, 48,000 felons and fugitives lied and illegally tried to purchase guns. They prosecuted only 44 of them.”
Cruz concluded, “Democrats filibustered the legislation that would have resulted in this shooter being in federal prison instead of murdering those innocents in that Texas church.”
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