This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated May 27, 2022
This column was going to be about a local community issue, but as I was about to begin writing it, news broke of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. I wrote last week about the mass shooting that took place in our state at a Buffalo supermarket, where ten people were murdered by an 18-year-old gunman. Ten days later, an 18-year-old shooter who was better armed than the police slaughtered 19 second, third, and fourth graders in Texas.
Everybody agrees that this is horrifying, but the fact that we can still not do a single thing to reform a system that allows mass murderers to be equipped with weapons of war is madness. Other countries have mental health issues, but none experience the frequent mass shootings we live with in America.
And yet Texas elected officials were slated to speak at an NRA convention in Texas three days later, including Governor Greg Abbott, who in 2015 tweeted that he was embarrassed that Texas was number two to California in gun purchases, encouraging Texans to “pick up the pace.” California’s population happens to be 33 percent greater than that of Texas.
As of the night of the Uvalde mass shooting, Senator Ted Cruz was expected to speak at the NRA event, but Senator John Cornyn’s office announced that he had an unexpected change to his schedule and would remain in Washington for Personal reasons. It should be noted that the NRA event will be a gun-free zone because these electeds are concerned about the presence of firearms.
“Nine in ten Americans support universal background checks for gun purchases. Three in four rank-and-file NRA members, of which there are about 5 million, agree.”
Citation….
They are quick to restrict guns to ensure their own safety but are unwilling to do a single thing to keep children in schools safe. Texas has some of the most lax gun laws in the country where almost anyone 18 or older can open carry almost any type of firearm. Had police encountered the Uvalde mass shooter a few blocks from the school earlier that day, walking the down the street carrying the assault rifle he had legally purchased on his 18th birthday, they would have had no cause under Texas law to intervene.
Nine in ten Americans support universal background checks for gun purchases. Three in four rank-and-file NRA members, of which there are about 5 million, agree. And yet the vast majority of Americans who are on the same page when it comes to sensible gun reforms – Republicans and Democrats alike – are held hostage by 50 GOP Senators who choose to ignore us and listen to the gun lobby that swells their campaign coffers and pulls their strings.
Senator Cruz immediately warned of people politicizing this to restrict people’s constitutional rights. Well, it does need to be politicized because children are predictably being massacred again and again due to political inaction. The framers of the Constitution could never have imagined the destructive capabilities of today’s deadliest rifles, nor should anyone believe that they would have forever enshrined the right to own any gun without restriction, had they realized one such firearm could slaughter 19 children in a few minutes.
Cruz went on to talk about how the solutions to this are to lock up dangerous felons, get rid of illegal guns, and identify the mentally unstable and arrest them. The reality is that most mass shooters have no previous record, they almost always kill with legally purchased firearms, and we do not imprison everyone with mental health issues. In spouting this nonsense, Cruz just does not appear to be a serious person, and yet this is one of the very people deciding how we deal – or refuse to deal, actually – with this deadly serious issue.
What are we doing? After Sandy Hook, where 20 first graders were massacred, we did nothing. Now, after the second deadliest school shooting of minors, this time of kids ages 9-11, we are poised to once again do absolutely nothing. The inaction and indifference is nearly as sickening as the murder of these 19 babies. The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association’s case before the U.S. Supreme Court seeks to make our state’s gun laws more like what we see in Texas, and the state Conservative and Republican parties continue to stand behind them instead of alongside us.
