Continued coverage of the Judiciary Committee’s hearing on Sen. Feinstein’s proposed assault weapons ban:
Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, who have been conservative outliers on many issues in the opening days of this Congress, certainly voiced their opposition to an assault-weapons ban, but they showed the political acumen to be much more measured in their approach than, say, Cruz was in going after Chuck Hagel.
Cruz offered condolences to gun-violence victims present in a very carefully worded statement: “I’d like to express the deepest sympathy that law enforcement was not able to prevent” the tragedies.
He said forcefully, “We need to target our efforts at violent criminals. We should not target our efforts toward needlessly restricting” citizens’ rights.
Cornyn sounded much the same note, pointing out through questioning that 4 million “law-abiding citizens” will still have guns classified as “assault weapons” under the proposed ban.
“Call me skeptical,” Cornyn said, because “criminals will continue to get weapons.” He added, “Sixty thousand people killed in Mexico show that drug cartels are not stopped by weapons restrictions.”
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina started by saying, “To all the victims of these shootings, I don’t know what to say, except ‘I’m sorry.’” Then he took the gloves off.
He repeatedly, argumentatively, interrupted U.S. Attorney John Walsh as Walsh tried to point out that law-enforcement is not making cases against people who fail background checks. As Walsh kept trying to respond that Graham was missing the point, the audience erupted into applause, drawing an admonition from Feinstein, who had to be grateful nonetheless for the evidence of support.
Graham, unperturbed, said, “I would argue that the law is fundamentally broken, and we should start fixing the laws we have rather than expanding them.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., asked Walsh, “Could you describe for us the events in that movie theater in Aurora, and how they might have been different?”
Walsh replied that while he was limited by his role in what he could say since Aurora is an active case, “It is a matter of public record that a shooting that resulted in 12 dead and 58 wounded took place in a time of 90 seconds.” He added that the Newtown killings occurred in less than four minutes. He cited the Tucson, Ariz., event in which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot, citing the fact the shooter was disarmed by heroic bystanders when he had to change magazines. Walsh posited the possibility that fewer people would have been shot if the shooter had not had a high-capacity 30-round magazine.
“There is no way we are going to prevent people from engaging in these sorts of attacks completely. What we can do by limiting and banning high-capacity magazines, is you can limit the damage and the tragedy these people cause.”
