WASHINGTON — Sen. John Cornyn said Thursday the 18-year-old responsible for the Uvalde school massacre fit an all-too-common profile of mass shooters: alienated young men with mental health issues.
“He engaged in self-mutilation, self-cutting, tortured animals, made threats against his fellow students, threatened sexual assault against his fellow female students and made threats that he would in fact do what he ultimately did online,” the Texas Republican said during a floor speech. “He was a ticking time bomb.”
Cornyn is the lead Republican negotiator in bipartisan Senate gun talks, which he said are making progress.
And he said the common elements of young, male mass shooters provide a “road map” as policymakers seek ways to prevent future incidents.
Salvador Ramos killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary using guns he purchased shortly after turning 18.
In response to that horrific slaughter and other mass shootings, the House passed a host of gun control measures Wednesday and Thursday, including bans on large ammunition clips and bump stocks and on sales of semiautomatic weapons to anyone under 21.
Most of those proposals are nonstarters in the Senate, however, where Cornyn described talks focused on more narrow proposals to keep guns away from troubled young people whose behavior as juveniles would make them ineligible to buy guns if they’d been adults at the time.
”What makes this challenging is Salvador Ramos showed up after his 18th birthday as if he was born yesterday,” Cornyn said, citing his threats to fellow students and other potentially disqualifying factors. “Because of the fact that juvenile records are typically sealed and are not part of the NICS review, the merchant who sold him the firearms he used didn’t know anything about his track record.”
NICS is the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, used to clear gun buyers when they try to make a purchase.
Cornyn acknowledged the refrain that Congress must “do something” and echoed other Republicans in saying that bolstering school security and mental health resources for young people represent “no brainers.” But he stood by his position that he won’t support anything he views as impinging on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.
That seems to rule out House-passed measures such as raising the minimum age for purchasing AK-47s and other semiautomatic rifles. Cornyn also doesn’t want to expand background checks to private sales, as Democrats demand. But he has led on efforts to making the system more effective by ensuring criminal records are reported, and he supports more such improvements
Sixteen days after Uvalde, it’s still unclear whether Ramos’ disturbing behavior as a juvenile resulted in official records that would have set off alarms in a background check — a lack of information frustrating to lawmakers crafting the congressional response.
Cornyn’s counterpart in the talks, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said red flag laws could still help in identifying individuals such as Ramos who should be prevented from having firearms.
“This kid had . . . a history peppered with concerning behavior and a red flag law . . . could have made a difference in Uvalde,” Murphy said.
House Republicans criticized red flag laws as a violation of due process rights before Democrats pushed through a bill earlier Thursday, saying they can be abused in situations such as contentious divorce proceedings. Eighteen states have such laws and Senate discussions seem focused more on encouraging such laws at the state level rather than a federal mandate.
Murphy was pressed on how many states, particularly those controlled by Republicans, would actually adopt such laws. He said breaking the logjam in Congress would have an impact, even in states where such laws are controversial.
“We have to put substantial money behind it to make it a meaningful incentive. And that’s what we have a commitment to do in the group,” Murphy said.
In his floor speech, Cornyn kept returning to the theme of bolstering the background check system to more effectively weed out dangerous young gun buyers.
In addition to uploading juvenile records to NICS, Cornyn described how the system sometimes returns a “yellow flag” when records in the system are incomplete.
Cornyn said that happens about 10% of the time. The FBI has three days to complete the background check and if it doesn’t, the seller has discretion to complete the purchase.
Cornyn said senators are discussing extending the time to review 18 to 21 years old buyers in those cases.
“There is a sense of urgency not only here in the Congress but in the White House and across the country,” Cornyn said. “We’ve all heard from our constituents who are in anguish over what has happened in Uvalde and elsewhere.”
