One More Texas Response to Gun Violence

I’ve blogged on numerous occasions how badly reasoned was Justice Antonin Scalia’s “originalist” majority opinion in the 2008 case of Heller vs DC – which for the first time in over two centuries held that the Second Amendment created a general and ubiquitous right for Americans to own firearms. The judicial aftermath to that ruling, combined with zealous rightwing red state legislatures, has turned the United States into a mass shooting killing field. With more firearms than people in the US, including about 30 million AR-15 style assault rifles, no one is safe. I am reminded that only one out of every 30 civilian gun homicides are legally deemed justifiable.

Donald Trump, at his May 10th New Hampshire Town Hall, repeated that the solution to school shootings was more guns: arm the teachers he said. “Stand your ground,” permitless concealed weapons and open carry laws – found virtually only in red states – have encouraged people to have guns… and to use them with a much lower threshold of justification. Except for nations embroiled in wars, there are no countries on earth with legal systems that enable such mass gun ownership. The unbelievably inane myth that “guns don’t kill people; people kill people” misses the dramatic point that people without guns kill vastly fewer people. Australia’s removal of a vast pool of guns following a 1996 mass shooting is proof that the more you take guns out of the system, significantly fewer people are killed.

It seems that every time I turn around, some ultra-rightwing Trump-appointed federal judge is disemboweling even modest efforts at gun control. Worse, the ability of plaintiffs to “shop for judges” has turned our judiciary into a mockery of neutrality. For example, in early May, a federal judge in Virginia, Robert Payne, ruled that a law banning licensed federal firearms dealers from selling handguns to young adults under 21 violates the Second Amendment and is unconstitutional, saying: “If the Court were to exclude 18-to-20-year-olds from the Second Amendment's protection, it would impose limitations on the Second Amendment that do not exist with other constitutional guarantees.” Baby steps rejected.

And then there’s Governor Gregg Abbott’s Texas, where unabashed gerrymandering – indeed, with the exception of Ft Worth, every major city in Texas is blue – has created the reddest of the red state position on just able every controversial law. Plus, guns and Texas seem united in an unbreakable bond. “The litany of Texas’ mass killings in just the last few years is staggering: Sutherland Springs, 26 killed in 2017; Santa Fe, 10 killed in 2018; El Paso, 23 killed in 2019; Midland-Odessa, seven killed in 2019; Uvalde, 21 killed in 2022; Cleveland, five killed on April 28; Allen, eight killed on May 6.

“Guns have long been a part of Texas culture — both in the state's mythology and in reality. But to equate the number of guns with the number of people killed by guns strikes some as a false equivalence… ‘You’ll never get people to give up their guns, nor do I believe you should,’ said Vanesa Brashier, the editor and publisher of Bluebonnet News, a site that covers rural areas north of Houston, including the town of Cleveland, where five immigrants were killed in a mass shooting on April 28.” Associated Press, May 11th.

The net result is an overwhelming state ethos that says, we will never limit gun ownership, so we all need to learn how to live with it. Learn to live with ordinary citizens with AR-15s strapped to their backs buying cheeseburgers for their kids at the neighborhood McDonalds or shopping at the local Target (see picture above left)? Well, Texas is thinking about another way to approach the inevitable next major school shooting.

Writing for the May 12th Los Angeles Times, Alexandra Petri writes: “About a year after a gunman massacred 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde [see picture, above right], Texas, a bill has been introduced by a state lawmaker to offer annual training to elementary school children on how to tie tourniquets or pack bleeding wounds during mass-casualty incidents.

“The May 24, 2022, shooting at Robb Elementary School led a Democratic state representative to propose expanding an existing state law that requires school districts to offer annual instruction on bleeding control techniques starting in the seventh grade. The new bill could lower the training threshold to elementary school children… ‘In a perfect world, this legislation wouldn’t be needed,’ state Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins of San Antonio, who wrote the bill, said in a statement. ‘Unfortunately, with mass shootings becoming so common in our state, it is necessary to give students tools that could help them save a life if they are confronted with this terrible situation.’

“Gervin-Hawkins also spearheaded the state’s current law, which was enacted in response to the 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School… The bill is a prime focus in a state that has relaxed access to firearms in recent years as the nation has endured increasing gun violence. It also highlights the stark reality that schoolchildren in America face daily.” Since we know we are going to lose a lot more in these mass killings, even little kids need to learn how to save one or more people at the expected shooting? Do our children really need to continue to practice active shooter drills, that scare the pants off of them, because the adults are unwilling to apply common sense to keep them safe?

I’m Peter Dekom, and there is no moral or legal justification I can think of that justifies letting adults and near-adults own military assault weapons with the absolute knowledge that this practice has and will result in the killing of vast numbers of people, and lots and lots of our children.