Ted Cruz Laughs as Father of Murdered Teen Calls Out GOP Failure on Gun Control
September 12, 2019
Ted Cruz (Gage Skidmore)
By Oliver Willis
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Tuesday met with Fred Guttenberg, father of 14-year-old Jaime Guttenberg, one of the students killed in the February 2018 Parkland school shooting.
The two met to discuss solutions to ending gun violence, in the wake of several mass shootings across the country.
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During their discussion, Cruz invoked the city of Chicago, as Republicans often do, to argue against national gun violence laws.
“Over Labor Day weekend, [Chicago] had 42 shootings – over Labor Day weekend,” Cruz said, suggesting that the city’s stringent gun laws would not have prevented those attacks.
Guttenberg interjected. “Chicago is exhibit number one of the failure of national gun legislation,” he said.
Cruz responded by laughing.
While Republicans often invoke Chicago — which has a majority nonwhite population — when discussing gun violence, gun safety advocates have repeatedly pointed out that guns used for crimes there come from outside the city.
As NBC Chicago noted in 2017, citing a report on the city’s violence, “Nearly 60% of guns recovered in Chicago come from out-of-state dealers, with more than 20 percent traced back to Indiana […].”
Mike Pence served as Indiana’s governor for years and repeatedly received an “A” rating from the NRA during his tenure.
Indiana’s lax gun laws, combined with opposition to federal legislation, allowed the so-called “Iron Pipeline” to bring guns and violence into the city of Chicago for years, a point Guttenberg tried to make on Tuesday.
“Your side will bring [up] Chicago as the example of [gun control] failure,” he told Cruz. “And I look at Chicago as an example in surrounding cities.”
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