Sen. Ted Cruz isn’t pretending Uvalde didn’t happen. While some might accuse him of doing such, he introduced bills that would respect the Second Amendment and provide a means to prevent or stop mass shootings.

Yet because it’s not gun control, anti-gun Sen. Chris Murphy was never going to be a fan.

It seems the Connecticut senator has killed the bills, even.

Two bills designed to improve school safety by increasing police force presence, locking and alarm systems, and mental health resources were blocked on Wednesday when Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy objected to the legislation.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) presented his Securing our Schools Act of 2022 and the Protect our Schools Act for unanimous consent. Together, the bills worked to fund and improve school safety for public, charter, and private schools. On top of improving school security, the legislation would have notably funded 15,000 new mental-health professionals in schools.

Cruz said when introducing the bills that it would be “the most significant school safety bill ever passed,” but an objection from the Connecticut senator – who styles himself as a leading gun control advocate – killed both bills.

“This isn’t real. This is a tv show. This is clickbait. This is theater. This isn’t an actual attempt to pass legislation,” Murphy said, voicing his objection from the Senate floor.

Cruz responded that Murphy was playing political games. Cruz is right.

The truth is that even if you support gun control, the idea of improving school security and providing a load of new mental health professionals in our schools should be something we could find common ground on. Oh, I get that someone like Murphy would never be satisfied with just that, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pass something we should all be able to agree on.

Meanwhile, Murphy will blast folks like you and me because we refuse to compromise on gun control, but he’s willing to ignore all of the good Cruz’s bill could have potentially done because it’s not a gun ban.

Look, I get there were parts of the bill Democrats were never going to agree to, but that’s where amendments come in. They could have stripped those more controversial parts of the bill and still provided the security these schools need.

Murphy’s been in the Senate long enough to know how this works, too, so ignorance isn’t an excuse.

The truth is that he doesn’t want to hand Republicans a win on school safety because it would undermine his and his party’s claim that the GOP doesn’t actually care about school safety because they won’t pass gun control.

Cruz’s bill shows that the two aren’t remotely the same thing.

The kicker in all of this? It’s unlikely that someone worked up about school shootings will heckle Murphy on a flight because of this, which happened to Cruz.

However, I can promise that the bill Murphy killed would have stopped at least some mass shootings. Based on his own rules, that means the blood of those shootings will be on his hands.