From left: Lonnie Phillips, Sandy Phillips, Felix Rubio and Kim Rubio meet with Sen. Ted Cruz in his Texas office in September 2022.
On Sunday, while many of us slept, a gunman opened fired on a bus in a University of Virginia parking lot and killed three students: D’Sean Perry, Devin Chandler and Lavel Davis Jr. Two others were injured. Students across the campus sheltered in place for almost 12 hours while an intensive manhunt ensued and finally ended when the suspect was taken into custody without incident. The incident marks the 598th mass shooting this year and the second school shooting in Virginia in 2022.
Polls show that gun control was one of the five top issues for voters during last week’s midterms. It is clear that people are tired of being afraid of mass shootings and they showed it by reelecting every senator who co-sponsored the federal assault weapons ban bill.
This does not surprise me. As an anti-gun activist, I have been lobbying for a federal assault weapons ban ever since my 6-year-old son and I survived a mass shooting earlier this year after a man opened fire with an AR-15 at our hometown’s Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, killing seven people and injuring over 40.
On a brisk but sunny Wednesday afternoon in September, I sat in a meeting surrounded by a small group of gun violence victims, survivors and activists. We were gathered in a circle of seats in the personal office of GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
He was seated right in front of me with only two feet of hot air between us and nothing else.
We went around the room introducing ourselves, and the senator was cordial. His face was appropriately sympathetic. He looked each of us in the eye as we spoke. He nodded along somberly as I told him about running with my 6-year-old son from a mass shooter.
After the introductions concluded, we asked for the senator’s support for a federal assault weapons ban.
Kim and Felix Rubio, the parents of Lexi, who was murdered at Robb Elementary School in May, had traveled all the way from Uvalde, Texas. Felix showed the senator a photo of their 10-year-old daughter in her casket. The senator looked at it stoically and then he looked at the pained faces of the Rubios as he told them that his solution to school shootings was to put more police officers in schools.
The energy in the room shifted suddenly. It was palpable. Some members of our group gasped. Others started crying. Sandy Phillips, the mother of Jesse Phillips, who was gunned down in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012, walked out of the room in disgust. Shock and disbelief hung heavy in the air over each of us as someone blurted out that 376 law enforcement officers stood by and did nothing to save the 19 children and two teachers who were brutally slaughtered in Uvalde.
They did nothing to save Lexi.
On Oct. 24, almost six weeks to the day of that meeting, a school shooting in St. Louis became the 40th school shooting this year.
As details emerged, it was reported that the shooter had a dozen 30-round magazines with him and he used an AR-15-style rifle. Just like the shooter in Uvalde. Just like in Highland Park. The school had metal detectors, the doors were locked and there were security guards.
It didn’t matter.
Even the police couldn’t prevent this school shooting ― the family of the shooter had asked police to seize the weapon that would later be used to kill 16-year-old Alexzandria Bell and physical education teacher Jean Kuczka. Police confiscated the weapon but “determined at that time the suspect was lawfully permitted to possess the firearm.” The AR-15-style assault weapon was returned to a third party known to the family. It is not known how the shooter regained possession of the firearm.
Ted Cruz was silent on Twitter. But gun violence prevention advocates…
Read More: We Met With Ted Cruz About Stopping Mass Shootings. His Response Was Disgusting.