Texas’ Cruz wants guns kept from ‘felons and fugitives’
WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Cruz is pushing his own version of gun control legislation in the Senate, but gun violence researchers said it’s unclear whether his plan will help prevent mass shootings.
Cruz, a Texas Republican, is behind the Protecting Communities and Preserving the Second Amendment Act of 2019 this fall, a bill he introduced with Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-iowa. Its prospects are likely to depend on whether President Donald Trump supports the measure, and so far there’s been no word from the White House.
“We should take up and pass (this bill and) focus on how you actually stop these violent crimes, which is going after the violent criminals and stopping them before they commit,” Cruz told reporters at a recent Christian Science Monitor breakfast.
The Grassley-cruz bill includes provisions to criminalize straw purchasing of firearms, which occurs when someone buys a gun for a prohibited purchaser. It would also ensure that federal agencies efficiently submit records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, NICS, the national system Cruz that gun sales personnel use to verify a purchaser’s criminal history.
The bill would also increase congressional oversight of the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute illegal gun sales by having the department explain to Congress why it chooses to prosecute some gun cases and not others.
The bill’s primary purpose, according to Cruz, is to keep firearms out of the hands of “felons and fugitives” rather than to take away the rights of “law-abiding citizens” to own guns, something he accused state legislators of doing by implementing red flag laws.
“One of the very first pieces of legislation I introduced in the Senate was focused on violent gun crime, stopping gun crime, and the way to do that is you target the bad guys, you target felons and target fugitives. You target those with serious mental illness that makes them a danger to themselves and others,” Cruz said Thursday.
Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama who studies mass shootings, says Cruz’s bill would be effective in preventing mass shootings, but it wouldn’t necessarily be more effective than passing “red flag” laws, which allow law enforcement to intervene when someone begins to show warning signs for violence or self-harm by taking away their access to guns.
“What about cases where we’re not dealing with what he calls fugitives and felons?” Lankford said. “There are cases where some (mass shooters) have not committed a felony yet, but they are saying and doing things that are red flags.”
Another provision of the Grassley-cruz bill allows for interstate firearm sales and the interstate transportation of firearms.
Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health who studies the effect of state firearm laws on homicide rates and suicide rates across the country, says that part of the bill effectively takes away states’ abilities to regulate firearms within their borders.