After the horrific massacre of 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz attended a vigil for the victims.
At the vigil, Cruz was cornered by British journalist Mark Stone from Sky News, who sought to grill the Texas senator about American gun laws.
“There are 19 sets of parents who are never going to get to kiss their child tonight again,” Cruz told Stone.
“Is this the moment to reform gun laws?” the reporter asked.
“You know, it’s easy to go to politics,” Cruz replied.
“But it’s important,” Stone said. “It’s at the heart of the issue.”
“I get that that’s where the media likes to go,” the senator said.
Stone pressed Cruz further, saying the 18-year-old gunman responsible for the slaughter in Uvalde was able to legally purchase two AR-15 rifles.
“If you want to stop violent crime, the proposals the Democrats have? None of them would have stopped this,” the senator said.
“But why does this only happen in your country?” Stone said.
He said that “many people around the world, 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. … You know what? You’ve got your political agenda. God love you,” Cruz responded.
He walked away, but Stone followed, repeatedly saying that gun violence like this is “just an American problem.”
The reporter then went further, saying, “You can’t answer that, can you?”
That’s when Cruz turned around and confronted him.
“Why is it that people come from all over the world to America? Because it’s the freest, most prosperous, safest country on Earth. Stop being a propagandist,” the senator said.
Cruz handled the aggressive interview well and can be applauded for that.
But there are two concerning issues revealed in Stone’s comments: ignorance and heckling.
Stone kept asking, “Why only in America?”
However, it’s not just in the United States that mass shootings happen.
Last August, a gunman in southwest England killed five people, including a young girl, NPR reported.
Do you approve of Cruz’s reponse?
It’s also inaccurate to assume the United States is the country with the most mass shootings and gun violence, according to World Population Review.
“Although events in the U.S. tend to get the lion’s share of media exposure, mass shootings are clearly a worldwide issue,” the data analysis site reported.
Looking at data for the U.S., Canada and Europe from 2009 to 2015, America was ranked 11th in “Average Annual Death Rate per Million People from Mass Public Shootings” at 0.089.
Norway (1.888), Serbia (0.381) and France (0.347) topped the list.
Stone should have done his research before putting on sanctimonious airs and making sweeping claims of “only in America.”
But sadly, this is the state of the news media. Stone is just an example of a broader problem in journalism.
Instead of reporting and researching issues, many in the media are more focused on heckling or promoting their political views.
Stone probably couldn’t have cared less what Cruz said — he wanted to get a rise out of the senator. He wanted to criticize the U.S. and GOP lawmakers like Cruz under the guise of journalistic questioning.
He has better things to do than waste time answering disingenuous “questions” from political activists disguised as reporters.
— Joe Mama (@goldbugger) May 26, 2022
It was more of the dishonest, sensationalized and propagandized “reporting” that passes for journalism now.
Thankfully, Cruz had enough of a level head at the moment to not take the bait.
