In your Sunday School lesson, I focused on a couple of local Texas officials, who spoke of their pain and anguish, their frustration and anger, and their hopes in the wake of the horrific shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde. For your Extra Credit, we'll spend time with another Texan - Rep. Dan Crenshaw - who talked with Dana Bash in the State of the Union classroom.
He was asked what "accountability looks like," considering the reports about law enforcement delays. He said he wasn't going to judge "the person who's walking through the breach and is in that moment in the arena," but he said it seems clear protocols weren't followed.
We have very clear training doctrine on this... I mean, the training
clearly states, you might get shot, but the guy behind you might be able to get
in and save innocent people.
He said someone's likely to get fired for these "very, very bad calls," adding that the Border Patrol coming in and doing the job is "pretty embarrassing for a lot of the local police officers.
Bash asked whether Crenshaw would vote yes on a national red flag law, noting that's one option in the bipartisan discussions in the Senate; fellow Texan Sen. John Cornyn is leading the Rs on that group.
Um, that's a 'no' on a national red flag law.
No, I wouldn't. You know, it's funny... You would think, from the trolls on the Internet, that I'm the number one
advocate for red flag laws. That's a bit of a myth perpetuated by my own side. Now,
truthfully, I think there's a lot of problems with red flag laws, especially at
a national level.
He mentioned that "criminal law" should be decided at the local and state level, but "you have to look at these and wonder what the actual purpose is."
And what about a red flag law in Texas? Um, that's also a 'no.'
and here's why, because what we are essentially trying to do with a
red flag law is enforce the law before the law has been broken. And that's a
really difficult thing to do. It's difficult to assess whether somebody is a
threat. Now, if they're such a threat they're threatening somebody with a
weapon already, well, then they have already broken the law, so why do you need
this other law? That's the question that I think critics rightfully ask about
these things
He's concerned about due process (even though these aren't criminal proceedings), and "ultimately how they even solve the problem, because these things have to be reported for them to actually matter." Of course, if you had a red flag law, things could be reported to the appropriate people, and reported to the background check system, too. That's kind of the purpose - to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them.
And,
in this case, look, you have a troubled teenager who did some very strange
things, shooting at people with BB guns, cutting himself, saying crazy things. Does
this reach the level where you involuntarily -- involuntarily commit him or
take his property? Because the thing is, is -- those things that this teenager
was doing could be applied to quite a few teenagers.
Crenshaw said "maybe the solution they could agree on is improving our background check system," since "it doesn't seem clear that" a red flag law would have worked here.
The problem is that the background check didn't capture the full story of this person. So, look, Republicans are the ones that proposed and passed the Fix NICS Act. Republicans have proposed the 21st century Fix NICS Act, which further improves the system...
OK - how about a universal background check? Um, that's also a 'no.'
So, people have to understand what universal background checks mean. That means that I can no longer sell a gun to my friend. If my neighbor, let's say her husband is gone for the week and she wants to borrow my gun, that would make us both felons. That's the problem with universal background checks. And the people who are least likely to adhere to universal background check are the criminals who intend harm.
And the gun show loophole? Um, that's also a 'no.'
When people say the gun show loophole, they're talking about private transfers, which gets back to the universal background check debate...There's nothing specific in law about a gun show that allows people to do more things than they would otherwise be able to do.
This article gives an example of the loophole, describing how a guy wanders around a gun show wearing a "handwritten menu" advertising specific guns for sale, and that there's no background check.
Another often-suggested change? Raising the age. Bash noted that the Uvalde, Buffalo, Parkland, and Sandy Hook shooters were all 20 or younger, and she asked, should the age be 21?
Well, I think the question we have to ask ourselves is, should 21 be the age that you're an adult? As a society, we do have to decide when you're technically an adult... And, right now, we technically say 18.
But, he said, he's "not very impressed by our current swathe of 18-year-olds and their maturity level," so maybe we can talk about this... Until, we start to talk about it. Then, That's also a 'no.'
When we see a 22-year-old commit an atrocity, are we going to raise it again and are we going to raise it again? And, at a certain point, we have to ask ourselves what our limiting principle is as far as that age limit, because, truthfully, the vast majority of these horrible shootings have been caused by an older person.
(The median age for people committing school shootings is 16; 2/3 of them are committed by people under 18. The age for other "horrible shootings" is in the 30s.)
Bash noted people are going to think he doesn't really want to do anything, since he said no to everything they've discussed; she asked, in a nutshell, what he'd say yes to. Here's that list: "actual security at a school."
And why can't you do both - 'harden' schools, and some of the other stuff, she asked? Because of the 2nd Amendment? That's exactly the problem, he said. Gun control policies,
they do two things. One, they infringe on the rights of million and millions of gun owners. And, two, they probably wouldn't have the outcome that you're hoping for. So, if you're not going to get the benefit you want, but you're going to -- it's going to come at great cost, that generally means it's not a very good policy. Again, that's why I go back to hardening schools.
He doesn't see a problem that there are tens of millions more guns than people here; he thinks that fine. He also mentioned a CDC study showing "there's hundreds of thousands of cases a year where somebody used a gun to protect themselves or protect others." Actually, the study is inconclusive, except on the fact that more study is needed on the public health implications of on guns.
Bash asked him "Do you really think the founding fathers, when they wrote well-regulated militia, intended for enough guns, weapons of war that you are so... highly trained in using, should be used to massacre children?"
Crenshaw talked about the "two different ideas in the 2nd Amendment" but he didn't say a thing about the founders. He also doesn't like the term 'weapons of war" because in the military, they use "much, much bigger" weapons than an AR-15.
At the end, Crenshaw wanted to add one more thing about rifles: "they actually make good self-defense weapons."
And, I'd add, they make very good offensive weapons, too.
See you around campus.
