Cruz Delivers Scathing Criticism During Senate Judiciary Gun Hearing

The Senate Judiciary Committee last Tuesday held yet another hearing on so-called “gun violence” as a public health crisis, but it was not until late in the session that the fireworks went off, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) taking aim at Democrats and their policies. The hearing may be viewed on C-SPAN.

“There are no moderate Democrats left in Congress,” Cruz declared. “Today’s Democrats, when it comes to guns, their objective is to disarm law-abiding citizens. They simultaneously embrace policies that release violent criminals from jail. They’re not interested in locking up murderers. They’re not interested in locking up gang bangers. They’re not interested in locking up violent criminals. Instead, they systematically support policies that release violent criminals.”

The hearing, chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), provided one more opportunity for Democrats to declare “gun violence” as a “public health crisis.” As noted by CBS News, Durbin contended guns are too easy to obtain, a claim law-abiding citizens in Illinois and other states with restrictive gun laws might easily dispute.

“Across the country, gun violence is a public health epidemic, plain and simple,” Durbin asserted.

But ranking member Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) countered, “Again, when we talk about the gun violence epidemic, it seems as though a substantial part of that debate is our current crime problem, which is spiked due to the left’s soft on crime policies and the defund the police movement.”

Newsweek focused its coverage on what it apparently thought was a point where it appeared Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy was tripped up by Dr. Megan Ranney, dean of the Yale Schol of Public Health, a panelist invited by the Democrat majority.

Kennedy made a point of noting the gun-related violence in Chicago, remarking that the city had become “America’s largest outdoor shooting range.”

“Do you think it’s because of Chicago citizens who have no criminal record but who have a gun in their home for protection or perhaps for hunting,” Kennedy inquired. “Or do you think it’s because of a finite group of criminals who have rap sheets as long as King Kong’s arm?”

Ranney’s response was to shift attention to Kennedy’s home state, which she says has a higher rate of firearms-related death than Chicago. The governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards is a Democrat, but the legislature is controlled by Republicans. The mayors of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, for example, are also Democrats.

The website Statista says Louisiana reported 408 homicides in 2022. Last year in Chicago, according to the watchdog website Heyjackass.com, there were a total 738 murders, of which 666 involved firearms. The murder rate may be higher, but when it comes to body counts, Chicago is well out front.

But when Dr. Ranney suggested other elements of the problem, her remark was quoted by Newsweek as, “I think there’s easy access to firearms combined with environmental conditions, lack of great education. There have actually been studies showing that when you green vacant lots and repair abandoned buildings in urban neighborhoods, you see decreases in gunshots and violence, as well as in stress and depression in the neighborhoods around them.”

Sen. Kennedy reportedly “dismissed her response as a ‘word salad.’”

Amy Swearer, senior Legal Fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, was also on the panel. A veteran of such hearings, she told the committee that using the “public health lens” to examine gun-related violence “hasn’t changed the discussion.”

“Put aside that the end goal of many of those pushing the public health framing is often either to use crisis language as an end run around the constitution or to pathologize the right to keep and bear arms,” Swearer observed. “A public health framework doesn’t change, for instance, the fact that most gun crimes are perpetrated not by ordinary lawful gun owners but by a small subset of repeat offenders who are already prohibited from owning guns.

“It certainly doesn’t change the fact that most gun control restrictions commonly proposed to deal with criminal violence and suicides,” she noted, “things like assault weapon bans, magazine capacity restrictions, punitive public carry laws and so on are not even remotely designed to meaningfully address the major factors underlying crimes or suicides.”

But it was not until Cruz had the microphone that the conversation began sizzling, and it was one long criticism of Democrats.

“The political ideology of today’s Democrats,” Cruz said, “makes no sense why your priority is disarming a law-abiding citizen but not going after the violent criminal.”

A moment later, Cruz lambasted Democrats for not supporting efforts to disarm criminals, asserting, “Instead, their objective is they want to take away the firearm from the singe mom who’s taking the subway home at night.”

Cruz wrapped up his remarks with a blistering critique of Democrat priorities.

“I’ve repeatedly introduced legislation to improve school safety,” he stated, “to invest to double the number of police officers in schools.”

He said Democrats objected to a proposal to allocate $15 billion for mental health counselors in schools.

“Their priority is not stopping the criminals,” he said. “Their priority is disarming law-abiding citizens. And by the way, they call it a public health crisis because they want to put supposed experts in charge of disarming you. The Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights is not a public health crisis.”

About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.