I started to respond regarding the amendment last night, but thought I'd just let it die. But then you brought it up again, and implied I was ignoring you. So I have no issue revisiting what happened...
Reid proposed the Safe schools, safe communities act of 2013, in response to Sandy Hook. GOP members indicated they would Filibuster it, so in response Reid established a 60 vote requirement for all proposed amendments, and that was passed with unanimous consent and no dissent. The Grassley-Cruz Amendment garnered 52 votes and a bi-partisan amendment offered by Toomey-Mancin received 54.
Cruz recently went on Fox and said this...
"
In 2013, I introduced legislation called Grassley-Cruz which targeted felons and fugitives and those with serious mental illness. It directed the Department of Justice to do an audit of federal convictions to make sure felons are in the database. It directed the Department of Justice to prosecute and put in jail felons and fugitives who try to illegally buy firearms.
"In the Harry Reid Democrat(ic) Senate, a majority of the Senate voted in favor of Grassley-Cruz, but the Democrats filibustered it. They demanded 60 votes. They defeated it, because they wanted to go after law-abiding citizens instead of stopping the bad guys."
So even though the GOP filibustered the original bill, as well as Toomey-Mancin, somehow it is the Dems who are to blame?
But notice how Cruz failed to mention the additions he made to the original, and how he attempted to gut significant aspects. You claim I post 1/2 truths, but Cruz made this same kind of claim in regards to another shooting a few years back, and WAPO rated it 3 pinochios because of 1/2 truths...
Here is what Ted left out about his proposed amendment...Btw this analysis predates any of the 3 most recent mass shootings- MI, Buffalo and Uvalde
"Amendments aplenty were proposed and defeated.
The one from Cruz and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) would have removed the core of the gun bill: the expanded background checks. The Grassley-Cruz plan instead proposed more prosecutions of gun buyers who falsely stated their criminal histories during the background-check process.
Among other changes, the Cruz amendment would have reduced penalties for states that neglected to submit records to the FBI’s centralized database for background checks of gun buyers, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The Cruz proposal also would have capped federal grants to improve states’ reporting procedures for the FBI database at $20 million, down from $100 million, and
allowed for the interstate sale and transport of firearms."
Now this analysis from WAPO is from March 2021, and was prompted by earlier grandstanding by Ted regarding "his amendment". But why did he feel the need to vote against the original bill and offer this amendment instead? In his latest appearance on Fox which I quoted above, no mention of the provision allowing interstate sale and transport of firearms. I wonder why that is?
So why the insistence by Cruz on a partisan bill he sponsored, rather than voting for a bi-partisan amendment that had more support? You've spoken favorably of Cruz's amendment, so I'm curious how you felt it made Reid's bill "better" and why it was preferable to Mancin-Toomey, which is summarized here
Editor's note: This story was published on April 20, 2013. It outlines a gun proposal that is back under discussion afte
www.politifact.com
Do you agree with Cruz's proposal to limit expanded background checks? My initial read is that Cruz's goal was to assuage the NRA (which didn't like Reid's bill) and also to resort to the old GOP standby of claiming that these mass killers are all "criminals".
But none of the 3 most recent examples are people who were "felons" illegally obtaining weapons. so none of them would have been prevented by what I read in summaries of Cruz's amendment. So I don't even see the relevance of what he said on Fox this week. It's just grandstanding, and nothing in his amendment would have prevented any of these 3 latest tragedies...
