As Cruz probes gun violence stats, Durbin sees some common ground on gun ... - Austin American-Statesman

At a hearing packed with victims of gun violence, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Tuesday that cities with the strictest gun laws have murder rates many times higher those in his home state, where guns are readily available.

"For example, if you look at the six cities with the highest murder rates, Detroit sadly in 2011 topped the list with 48 murders per 100,000 people," Cruz said. "Baltimore, Maryland, was second with 31 murders per 100,000. Philadelphia was third with 21 murders per 100,000 people. Memphis, Tennessee, the only one of the top six without especially vigorous gun laws, was fourth with 18 murders per 100,000 people. Washington, D.C., was fifth with 18, and Chicago, Ill., was sixth with 16 murders per 100,000 people."

By contrast, he said, in his hometown of Houston, the rate was 9 murders per 100,000 people; in San Antonio, the number was 7, Austin, 4, and El Paso, 2.

"That means that the rate in Detroit is 24 times higher than it is in El Paso," Cruz said.

But Cruz, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, said that stiffening penalties on "straw purchasers" of guns — legal buyers who resell guns to criminals — a crackdown advocated by the Justice Department and subcommittee Chairman Richard Durbin, D-Ill., is an area of "potential bipartisan cooperation."

Durbin said after the hearing that Cruz's comment encouraged his belief that "we are going to find some elements" of agreement.

"You can tell the ones that are going to the most difficult," Durbin said. "The assault weapons ban is one of them. I support it, but it's an uphill struggle. When it comes to straw purchasers and mental health disclosure, there is a merging going on."

At the opening of the packed hearing, Durbin asked family members of gun victims to rise, and about 100 people in the front rows stood up. It included family members of children killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which brought the issue of gun violence to the fore, made it a priority of President Barack Obama and put it atop the congressional agenda.

Cruz noted that Chicago has both the nation's toughest gun laws and among the highest murder rates in the country.

Pointing to the availability of guns beyond its borders, Durbin said, "Chicago is a great city, but it's not an island."

But Cruz said neither are Texas cities, with their lower murder rates.

Cruz pressed one witness, Timothy Heaphy, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, to offer any empirical evidence that gun restrictions yield less gun violence.

Heaphy said "it's not an exact science," and there is "a lot of alchemy to try to come up with single factors" that explain relative levels of gun crimes.