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Ted Cruz Is Being Dragged For Saying Schools Should Only Have One Door (And Hope There’s Never A Fire, For One Thing)

Ted Cruz
Twitter / @Acyn

The massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in which a shooter killed 19 children and two adults at an elementary school, has left America reeling. It’s the worst K-12 school shooting since Sandy Hook in 2012, which almost — but tragically did not — lead to stricter laws on gun control. Perhaps it will this time. Certainly Republicans have no good solutions, apart from doing what they always do after mass shootings: nothing — except from collecting more NRA money.

Still, some Republican lawmakers have at least tried. Take Ted Cruz. After he was owned by an Arizona congressman over his robotic initial response to the massacre, he’s sprung into action. No, he didn’t flee to a beach resort. He’s offered his own solutions. In the past, Republicans have floated the idea of arming school teachers. Perhaps even they realized that’s an insane and dangerous idea, so some of them, Cruz included, came up with a comparatively elegant solution.

“Have one door into and out of the school,” Cruz confidently thundered on Fox News. “And have that one door, armed police officers at that door.” Had Robb Elementary School been a giant building with a single door, Cruz averred, “when that psychopath arrived, the armed police officers could’ve taken him out, and we’d have 19 children and two teachers still alive.”

Of course, he left out the part where multiple officers spotted the perpetrator before he entered the school, but were unable to stop him. But perhaps Cruz didn’t feel that was pertinent to his foolproof plan.

Of course, there were a lot of holes in Cruz’s logic, as people on Twitter were happy to point out.

One problem with Cruz’s solution? There could be a fire, and then thousands of students, teachers, and staff would be stuck trying to cram through a single exit.

Or if a shooter did get in, then everyone would be trapped inside with them.

Then there’s the nightmare it would be getting everyone — again, thousands of people, five days a week — in and out every day.

Let’s not even mention that forcing the nation’s K-12 students to spend most of their early years in what sounds like a maximum security prison would almost certainly be infinitely more traumatizing than whatever Republicans like Ron DeSantis think happens when kids learn that some people are gay and trans.

Because this is Cruz, there were also jokes.

To be fair, Cruz isn’t the only one who thinks the real problem with gun violence is doors. Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick thinks so, too.

Of course, there’s a much simpler way to protect America’s young students from mass murderers with semi-automatic rifles: Pass at least minimal gun control laws. Maybe they can start with background checks, which are consistently supported by a vast majority of the country. But then all those NRA checks might not clear.