Courtesy of Bastrop Advertiser
June 2, 2022
By Bill McCann
Following the horrendous killing of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last week, my daughter, who’s a teacher, wrote: “I’m so tired of having hard conversations with my students about dead humans. Not because I’m afraid to talk to them. But because it keeps happening.”
It keeps happening because voters keep electing politicians who lack the backbone to stand up to gun lobbyists. It keeps happening because too many people believe the extremists who lie that reasonable restrictions like expanding background checks and renewing a ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines somehow leads to taking away all their guns.
That’s why it was so encouraging to see gutsy Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, stand up for kids last week. O’Rourke interrupted a news conference headed by Gov. Greg Abbott in Uvalde following a shooting rampage by an 18-year-old male with an assault-style rifle.
“The time to stop the next shooting is right now and you are doing nothing,” O’Rourke, a former El Paso congressman, told Abbott before being escorted out. “You are offering up nothing.”
Critics called O’Rourke a “grandstander.” So what? So were the other politicos attending the news conference for a photo op, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. He’s the king of grandstanders.
O’Rourke may have been grandstanding, but it was warranted. What he did was right. What he said was right. He focused attention on the fact that Abbott and other state political leaders have done nothing about guns to make us safer. Meanwhile, Texas has among the weakest gun restrictions while experiencing some of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings during Abbott’s rule. Thoughts and prayers don’t protect kids from an 18-year-old legally able to buy two semi-automatic rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition within a week.
In fact, Abbott and the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature have loosened state gun laws in the past two legislative sessions. They pretended to be interested in gun restrictions when the heat was on after mass shootings at an El Paso Walmart and a Midland-Odessa shopping center in 2019. Instead, last year they passed a bill allowing persons 21 and older to carry a handgun without a permit, despite objections from law enforcement.
Texas Republican leaders avoid talking about gun safety. Immediately after the Uvalde school shooting, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton rehashed the idea of arming teachers, as if a gentle soul with a handgun would have a chance against an assault weapon. The Uvalde tragedy demonstrated again the failed theory of “good guys with guns,” as local police reportedly waited for an hour while desperate parents begged them to pursue the shooter inside the school.
Abbott, meanwhile, tried to make the Uvalde murders about mental health. Yet in April he cut $211 million from the state agency that oversees the state’s mental health programs, NBC News reported. Last fall a report by the nonprofit organization Mental Health America placed Texas last among the states in access to mental health care.
National public opinion polls have shown consistently that citizens overwhelmingly support sensible gun-safety restrictions. For good reason. The U.S. has roughly 4% of the world’s population and more than 40% of civilian-owned guns. The U.S. has more guns owned by civilians than it has people. And it is by far the worst of the world’s developed countries in the rate of violent gun deaths.
Since the Abbotts of this country won’t change, residents should take to the streets in peaceful protest to keep public attention on the gun crisis. More importantly, they should vote these cowards out of office. They should elect people like Beto O’Rourke, who aren’t afraid to shake things up — and do what’s right.
McCann is a contributing columnist for the Advertiser. He is a retired journalist and may be reached at [email protected].
