SATURDAY, MAY 28 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
said inconsistent statements
from state leaders and law en-
forcement have “shaken Texans’
confidence in state government
and in the governor.”
The congressman also accused
Abbott of making the state less
safe as mass shootings piled up.
“He has made the state more
dangerous by making it easier for
dangerous people to get a gun,”
Castro said.
On Friday, calls for a legislative
response became bipartisan, with
Republican state Sen. Kel Seliger
urging Abbott to “call us into
special sessions until we do
SOMETHING.”
Former aides said the window
for compromise in Austin has
narrowed, especially in advance
of the November election. And
they said calling lawmakers back
to Austin, only for talks to prove
futile, could be damaging to
A bbott.
Wayne Hamilton, who man-
aged Abbott’s 2014 campaign,
said he expects the governor, who
has used a wheelchair since an
accident in the 1980s, to take his
time before reacting to calls for
new legislation.
“As someone who has experi-
enced personal tragedy, he is very
in tune and focused on being with
the hurting people, and that is
what you are going to see him do
for the near future,” Hamilton
said. “You are not going to get him
to talk about the policy stuff and
the political stuff.”
After the Santa Fe shooting in
2018, he asked the legislature to
explore a new red-flag law that
would “identify those intent on
violence from firearms” and al-
low the state to remove guns from
their possession. But the proposal
faced backlash, including from
the state Republican Party, which
came out against the idea in its
platform that year.
The proposal never became
law.available every state resource to
help victims’ families, teachers,
and the Uvalde community as
they work to heal.”
And on Friday, Steven McCraw,
director of the Department of
Public Safety, further walked
back initial accounts by acknowl-
edging that a local incident com-
mander had made the “wrong
decision” by holding officers back
from entering the classroom with
the gunman, believing he had
shifted from an “active shooter”
to a “barricaded subject.”
For nearly 50 minutes, chil-
dren inside called 911 to beg for
help from the active shooter, as
officers waited outside a pair of
classrooms, McCraw acknowl-
edged for the first time Friday.
A spokesman for Abbott did
not respond to a request for
comment about where he was
receiving his information and
how he was verifying it.
Abbott scrapped a planned ap-
pearance Friday at a meeting of
the National Rifle Association in
Houston in favor of prerecorded
remarks in which he dismissed
the notion that more gun regula-
tions would have prevented the
atrocity.
“There are thousands of laws
on the books across the country
that limit the owning or using of
firearms, laws that have not
stopped madmen from carrying
out evil acts on innocent people
in peaceful communities,” he told
the gun rights group.
Later in Uvalde, he declined to
immediately call a special legisla-
tive session to develop solutions
that might quell gun violence,
while saying he did want an
extensive review of state law,
particularly around school safety
and health care.
“ Let me make one thing clear.
The status quo is unacceptable,”
he said. “This crime is unaccept-
able.”
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.)Austin so I could continue to my
collaboration with Texas law en-
forcement.”
Abbott also spoke Tuesday eve-
ning to President Biden, who
offered “any and all assistance,”
according to the White House.
On Wednesday, he traveled to
Uvalde, where he appeared with
law enforcement and other senior
state officials, as well as federal
and state lawmakers, to deliver
details about how the shooting
had unfolded. The news confer-
ence drew headlines mainly be-
cause it was interrupted by Beto
O’Rourke, the Democrat and for-
mer Texas congressman who is
running against Abbott for gover-
nor.
Abbott’s mission was not to
debate, he made clear, but to clear
up misconceptions about the
shooting. “Let me tell you some of
the best information we have at
this time,” he said, stressing that
the investigation was still under-
way.
He put particular emphasis on
the heroism of the police.
“As horrible as what happened,
it could have been worse,” Abbott
said. “The reason it was not worse
is because law enforcement offi-
cials did what they do. They
showed amazing courage by run-
ning toward gunfire for the singu-
lar purpose of trying to save lives.”
Crucially, he said school offi-
cers “approached the gunman
and engaged with the gunman.”
That account echoed statements
delivered by state authorities,
some of whom said officers ex-
changed fire with the gunman.
But on Thursday, state officials
made clear that officers had not
engaged the gunman outside the
school, and that a school district
police officer was not on campus
at the time. Abbott kept a low
profile, huddling with aides in
Austin. On Twitter, he shared
images of a briefing with state
agencies and vowed to “makeat all.”
Abbott was in Abilene on Tues-
day afternoon, providing updates
on wildfires scorching an eastern
swath of his state, when he was
first asked about reports of a
school shooting four hours due
south in Uvalde.
Lawmakers flanking him at a
news conference had seen only
brief snippets on their phones —
chaos at an elementary school,
more than a dozen children mur-
dered. But the governor spoke
confidently about what had just
occurred, identifying the shooter
and pronouncing him dead.
Abbott looked burdened after
his remarks in Abilene, recalled
state Sen. Charles Perry, a fellow
Republican who joined him at his
news conference. When the news
conference ended, Perry asked
him, “You holding up all right?”
“Hard day,” was his response,
the state lawmaker recalled.
But the governor’s day was far
from over. Before returning to
Austin, he stopped at a fundraiser
in Walker County, north of Hous-
ton — a move that former aides
and Republican operatives said
baffled them. One said he feared a
fundraiser was the reason the
governor did not go directly to
Uvalde on Tuesday night, but was
“shocked” to learn that he was
right.
The fundraiser’s organizer, Jeff
Bradley, confirmed in a text mes-
sage that he had hosted the gover-
nor, who was there a “very short
time due to the crisis in Uvalde,”
and said he did not know how
much the event had raised from
attendees. A spokesman for Ab-
bott’s campaign said further po-
litical activity had been post-
poned, and the governor, re-
sponding to a question about the
fundraiser, told reporters he
“stopped and let people know
that I could not stay, that I needed
to go and I wanted them to know
what happened and get back toTexas school shootingtion is rock solid,” said state Rep.
Richard Raymon, the Democratic
chairman of the committee over-
seeing the Texas Military Depart-
ment, which works closely with
the Department of Public Safety.
“You can’t fumble this one.”
Abbott has had ample experi-
ence in such situations. Since his
election as governor in 2014, the
governor has overseen the state’s
response to mass shootings that,
together, have killed more than
90 people, including attacks on a
church in Sutherland Springs, a
high school in Santa Fe, a
W almart in El Paso and shooting
sprees on the streets of Odessa,
Midland and Dallas.
Abbott has supported in-
creased training and funding for
school security in response, but
resisted efforts to impose greater
restrictions on gun ownership
and use. Instead, he has pushed
to loosen gun regulations, signing
one 2015 law that allows con-
cealed handguns on college cam-
puses and a 2021 law that allows
Texans to carry a concealed hand-
gun without a license or training.
He signed other laws last year
that allow gun owners to store
firearms in hotel rooms, possess
silencers and carry weapons out-
side of a shoulder or belt holster.
He also prohibited the govern-
ment from reducing gun sales
during disasters and emergency.
Since the Tuesday shooting, he
has shown no indication that he
is rethinking any of those stances.
“Let’s be clear about one thing,”
he said Friday. “None of the laws
that I signed this past session had
any intersection with this crime“I was on this very stage two
days ago and I was telling the
public information that had been
told to me,” the Republican said,
his voice rising at times in anger.
“As everybody has learned, the
information that I was given
turned out in part to be inaccu-
rate. And I’m absolutely livid
about that.”
The dramatic appearance
came as anguish grew among
grieving families over law en-
forcement’s response. It also
came as Abbott — the most visible
messenger in the days following
the massacre — faces increasing
criticism that he moved too
quickly to amplify a false law
enforcement narrative that aligns
with his own political beliefs.
Federal authorities were “flab-
bergasted at the amateurish com-
munications coming from Texas,”
said a federal law enforcement
official who, along with others,
spoke on the condition of ano-
nymity to address sensitive mat-
ters related to the shooting.
Democrats in the state have
begun to call for the FBI to take a
greater role in the review of
events, while raising questions
about Abbott’s decision to relay
unverified information. Abbott is
running ahead in polls for his
reelection this year, and is in-
creasingly viewed as a possible
contender for the 2024 Republi-
can presidential nomination.
“If I were the governor, when
you have something this terrible
affecting so many lives, I would
want to make sure my informa-
ABBOTT FROM A
Abbott’s initial
narrative criticized
BY FELICIA SONMEZ,
MIKE DEBONIS
AND AMY B WANGTexas’s two senators — Ted
Cruz and John Cornyn — have
similar positions on gun legisla-
tion. Both have received “A+”
ratings from the National Rifle
Association’s political arm. Both
have opposed efforts to tighten
restrictions on firearms, includ-
ing the banning of assault rifles
and the limiting of high-capacity
magazine sales.
But in the wake of Tuesday’s
mass shooting at Robb Elemen-
tary School in Uvalde, Tex. — the
second-deadliest K-12 school
shooting in American history —
Cornyn and Cruz have struck
markedly different tones while
adopting contrasting roles.
Cornyn, 70, the state’s senior
senator, had been scheduled to
speak at Friday’s NRA annual
meeting in Houston. He pulled
out ahead of the shooting for
personal reasons requiring him
to be in Washington, a spokesper-
son said.
Cruz, 51, went ahead with plans
to speak at the event Friday. In his
remarks, he called the Uvalde
shooting “the ultimate nightmare
for every parent” and accused
Democrats of seeking to use the
massacre as a pretext to “disarm
Americans.”
“Ultimately, as we all know,
what stops armed bad guys is
armed good guys,” he said.
Cruz also hailed the “Border
Patrol tactical unit who finally
killed the Uvalde monster” — but
did not address the questions at
the heart of the authorities’
shooting response, including the
fact that armed officers waited
outside the classrooms for more
than 50 minutes while the shoot-
er was still inside.
One day earlier, Senate Minori-
ty Leader Mitch McConnell
(R-Ky.) had tapped Cornyn to
negotiate with Democrats on pos-
sible but not probable gun legisla-
tion, deputizing the former mem-
ber of Senate GOP leadership.
“Maybe this will provide some
impetus” for compromise,
Cornyn told reporters at the Capi-
tol on Thursday. “This is horrible.
Hard to imagine anything that
could be worse than parents wor-
rying about the safety of their
kids going to school.”
Cruz, meanwhile, was making
international headlines for
storming away from a British
journalist after being asked why
mass shootings take place “only
in America.” The exchange took
place as Cruz was attending a
vigil in Texas for the 19 children
and two adults killed in the mas-
sacre.
Pressed on restrictions on
guns, Cruz said this week: “That
doesn’t work. It’s not effective. It
doesn’t prevent crime.”
After mass shootings in previ-
ous years, both Cruz and Cornyn
have issued statements that have
almost always omitted the men-
tion of guns. But Cornyn — a
former Texas attorney general
and state Supreme Court justice
who has long courted and en-
joyed strong support from gun
rights organizations — has in the
past been open to working across
the aisle on certain gun-related
legislation.
Cornyn is the lead author of the
bill that the NRA considers to be
one of its most important con-
gressional priorities — the Con-
stitutional Concealed Carry Reci-
procity Act, which would allow
gun owners who are permitted to
carry a concealed weapon in their
own state to do so in any other
state, as well.
While gun rights supporters
say the bill is necessary to safe-
guard gun owners from a patch-
work of varying state laws, sup-
porters of gun control argue that
the bill would effectively gut state
laws restricting concealed carry.
Still, Cornyn has been a fre-
quent and willing interlocutor for
Democrats on potential gun com-promises. He was, in fact, the
architect of the only remotely
significant gun-related legisla-
tion to emerge from the Senate in
the past decade, 2018’s Fix NICS
Act.
In November 2017, a former Air
Force airman opened fire at a
Baptist church in Sutherland
Springs, Tex., killing more than
two dozen people. The Air Force
came under scrutiny after it was
discovered that the gunman,
Devin Patrick Kelley, had been
convicted of domestic assault but
that the military had never re-
ported that conviction to the FBI
for the National Instant Criminal
Background Check System, as
was required. If they had done so,
Kelley would not have been able
to pass a background check and
likely “would have been deterred
from carrying out the Church
shooting,” a federal judge wrote
last year.
In the months after the Suther-
land Springs shooting, Cornyn
teamed up with Democratic Sens.
Chris Murphy and Richard Blu-
menthal, both of Connecticut, to
craft and push the Fix NICS bill to
reinforce that reporting require-
ment to the FBI’s background
check system and to create finan-
cial incentives for states to do so.
Then-President Donald Trump
signed the bill into law in March
2018.
The bill was carefully writtenand messaged as a strengthening
of current law, not an expansion
of it.
Murphy said when it was intro-
duced that “much more needs to
be done” but that the bill “repre-
sents the strongest update to the
background checks system in a
decade and provides the founda-
tion for more compromise in the
future.”
While some hard-line groups
such as Gun Owners of America
came out strongly against the bill,
the NRA quietly supported it,
noting that it would “not add any
new disqualifications to federal
law” and was “concerned entirely
with enforcing the current prohi-
bitions.”
It would not, however, be the
last time a family, school or con-
gregation in Texas would suffer
through a mass shooting. Less
than two months later, in May
2018, a 17-year-old student with a
shotgun and a pistol went on a
rampage at Santa Fe High School,
outside Houston, killing eight
students and two teachers. And in
August 2019, a gunman who later
said he was targeting “Mexicans”
drove to El Paso and opened fire
in a Walmart, killing 23 people.
Cornyn was a key backer of
another bill aimed at federal
background checks, which would
require the Justice Department to
notify local law enforcement of a
failed background check within24 hours for further investiga-
tion. That measure attracted bi-
partisan co-sponsors and was in-
cluded in the Violence Against
Women Act reauthorization bill
that President Biden signed into
law in March.
But another recent effort,
launched last year after Demo-
crats won the Senate majority
and threatened to pass more ex-
pansive gun control bills, did not
pan out.
It was aimed at expanding the
universe of federal background
checks by clarifying the defini-
tion of who is required to register
as a federal firearms dealer and
thus process background checks.
This would go some way toward
closing what is frequently called
the “gun show loophole” or “pri-
vate seller loophole” that has
been exploited by some mass
shooters, such as the gunman
who killed six people in 2019 in
West Texas.
Cornyn and Murphy engaged
on the topic in March 2021 and
expressed optimism that a deal
was in sight. But some gun rights
groups told their members that
Cornyn was preparing to sell
them out behind closed doors.
“If John Cornyn, who repre-
sents the state of TEXAS, is al-
ready considering stabbing gun
owners in the back, then you
know that we’re truly in a DIRE
situation,” one email from GunOwners of America read.
By June, Murphy told reporters
that a deal simply was not going
to come together: What Cornyn
was willing to give on would not
“meaningfully increase the num-
ber of gun sales that require
background checks.” And so died
the last significant bipartisan gun
talks in the Senate — until this
week.
“I’m not taking anything off the
table except for denying people
their constitutional rights who
are law-abiding citizens,” Cornyn
said Thursday.
In contrast to Cornyn, Cruz has
taken a more combative ap-
proach in the days since the Uval-
de massacre. The junior senator
from Texas ran unsuccessfully for
the GOP presidential nomination
in 2016 and has hinted that he
may pursue another bid in 2024.
Cornyn, the former Senate Re-
publican whip, was reelected in
2020 and has not signaled any
ambitions beyond possibly suc-
ceeding McConnell as Senate
GOP leader someday.
As Texas solicitor general in
2008, Cruz led 31 states in an
amicus brief opposing the Dis-
trict of Columbia’s handgun ban.
And after joining the Senate in
2013, he frequently touted his
efforts to oppose Democratic-led
gun control proposals spurred by
mass shootings.
Last year, Cruz joined more
than two dozen House Republi-
cans in asking the Biden adminis-
tration to lift sanctions on ammu-
nition imported from Russia, ac-
cording to a letter obtained by
The Washington Post. The group
accused the administration of us-
ing the sanctions as a means to
enact gun-control measures and
argued that it would exacerbate a
shortage of ammunition.
“Until we receive a response,
we will have to presume that this
ban is an attempt to restrict
Americans’ right to bear arms —
bypassing Congress to imple-
ment gun control,” they wrote.
Cruz has also been one of sev-
eral Republicans to come under
criticism for seeking to shift the
focus away from the number of
guns in America to the number of
doors at American schools.
“You want to talk about the
horror that played out across the
street? Look, the killer entered
here the same way the killer
entered in Santa Fe — through a
back door, an unlocked back
door,” Cruz told reporters
Wednesday outside Robb El-
ementary School.
He argued that future mass
shootings could be avoided by
having “one door that goes in and
out of the school [and] having
armed police officers at that
door.”Timothy Bella, Leigh Ann Caldwell
and Adela Suliman contributed to
this report.Cruz, Cornyn in sync on gun votes but diverge on tone
The senior senator from
Texas has been tapped tonegotiate with Democrats
SERGIO FLORES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
R epublican Sens. John Cornyn, left, and Ted Cruz, standing at far right, arrive at U valde High School on Wednesday. Twenty-one people
were killed after a gunman opened fire inside Robb Elementary School on Tuesday.