Sen. Ted Cruz lost his patience with a British journalist from Sky News after he continued to pester him about why so many mass shootings take place in the U.S. before going on to question “American exceptionalism.”
The back-and-forth with correspondent Mark Stone came as Cruz finished a press conference at which Texas GOP governor Greg Abbott had spoken about the tragedy at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, earlier this week, when 19 children and two adults were gunned down by an 18-year-old wielding an AR-15-style rifle.
“Is this the moment to reform gun laws?” Stone asked Cruz.
“You know, it’s easy to go to politics,” Cruz answered.
Without mentioning any other issues at play in mass shooting scenarios like mental illness, Stone then insisted, “But it’s important. It’s at the heart of the issue.”
“I get that that’s where the media likes to go,” Cruz responded.
“But it’s not. It’s where many of the people we’ve talked to here like to go,” Stone insisted.
Cruz attempted to respond but was cut off: “The proposals from Democrats and the media inevitably, when some violent psychopath murders people —”
“A violent psychopath is able to get a weapon so easily,” Stone complained. “Eighteen-year old with two AR-15s.”
“If you want to stop violent crime, the proposals the Democrats have — none of them would have stopped this,” Cruz pointed out.
Stone then attacked the U.S. in general: “But why does this only happen in your country? I really think that’s what many people around the world, just — they cannot fathom why only in America? Why is this American exceptionalism so awful?”
“You know, I’m sorry you think American exceptionalism is awful,” Cruz replied.
“This aspect of it. This aspect of it,” Stone said.
“You know what? You’ve got your political agenda. God love you,” Cruz said as he started to walk away.
But Stone followed, pressuring, “I just want to understand why you do not think that guns are the problem.” He then declared: “It is just an American problem, sir.”
A woman echoed. “Mr. Cruz, why is America the only country that faces this kind of mass shooting?”
Stone, excitedly, “You can’t answer that.” Then, badgering, he repeated, “You can’t answer that. You can’t answer that, can you sir? You can’t answer that. “
Cruz, fed-up, responded, “Why is it that people come from all over the world to America? Because it’s the freest, most prosperous, safest country on Earth. And stop being a propagandist.”
Also in dispute is the claim that the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings. In 2019, investigative journalist John Stossel, citing studies by researcher John Lott, reported that the noting the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings could very well be inaccurate because it is impossible to get such data from dozens of countries simply because they don’t collect it.
Stossel wrote at The Daily Signal:
A few years ago, much of the media claimed that the U.S. has “the most mass shootings of any country in the world.” Then-President Barack Obama added it’s “a pattern now … that has no parallel anywhere else … .”
CNN and the Los Angeles Times wrote about “Why the U.S. Has the Most Mass Shootings.” (“The United States has more guns.”)
But the U.S. doesn’t have the most mass shootings, says Lott. It’s a myth created by University of Alabama associate professor Adam Lankford, a myth repeated by anti-gun media in hundreds of news stories.
“Lankford claimed that since 1966, there were 90 mass public shooters in the United States, more than any other country,” says Lott. “Lankford claimed ‘complete data’ were available from 171 countries.”
But how could that be? Many governments don’t collect such data, and even fewer have information from before the days of the internet.
A shooting in say, India, would likely be reported only in local newspapers, in a local dialect. How would Lankford ever find out about it? How did he collect his information? What languages did he search in?
He won’t say.
