Texans like to talk about how everything is bigger here, but Saturday’s mass shooting in Midland/Odessa helped push us towards records we should be (and hopefully most Texas are) ashamed of and horrified by. As of September 1st, we’ve had more people killed in mass shootings than any other state except Nevada. As for total number of historical mass shootings, Texas is in third place nationwide. And yet, nuts like Texas House member Matt Schaefer still scream about their “G*d-given” right to have a gun. (Esquire)
In the same vein, Governor Greg “Hey” Abbott perpetuated the false “good person with a gun” narrative by loosening gun restrictions for schools, foster homes, apartment buildings, and churches (because nothing says “Hallelujah” like an AR-15). Also demonstrating his impeccable timing, the new laws went into effect just a few hours before Texas’ second mass shooting in less than a month. (Vox)
Even the NRA’s favorite governor had to admit that the Midland/Odessa shooter “previously failed a gun purchase background check and did not go through a background check to buy the gun used in Saturday's incident.” Of course, the Texas GOP has no plans to close these loopholes, even though they’re big enough to drive a Dodge Ram truck through on your way to the gun show. (The Texas Tribune)
Achieving the rare trifecta of stupid ideas (well, maybe not so rare for the GOP) Abbott has also proposed “expedited executions” for mass shooters. Yeah, Texas already has one of the highest murder rates, even with one of the highest executions rates…so why not add mass shooters to the list? (The Texas Tribune)
Mini-Rant – Texas Could Make a Difference…But Won’t
When I was 4 years old, a young man went to the observation deck of the Main Building tower at the University of Texas at Austin and opened fire on the people below. When it was all over, 18 people and the shooter were dead. I was too young to really remember it, but it was such an aberration that it’s become part of our national identity, the story retold in movies like Full Metal Jacket and Natural Born Killers and television shows like X-Files and Mad Men.
As I grew up in Texas, the mass shootings piled up over the years:
- 1980 – An accused child rapist walked into the First Baptist Church in Daingerfield, Texas with a knock-off of a semi-automatic rifle and an M1 carbine. He killed 5 and wounded 10 because no one at the church would testify for him as a character witness.
- 1982 – A truck driver with a shortened M1 carbine and a .25-caliber semi-automatic pistol traveled to 2 warehouses in Grand Prairie and killed 6 and injured 4 over a pay dispute.
- 1991 – A misogynist with 2 semi-automatic pistols crashed his truck through the front window of a Luby’s in Killeen, screamed “All women of Killeen and Belton are vipers! This is what you've done to me and my family! This is what Bell County did to me... this is payback day!" Then he walked around the restaurant, shooting randomly, killing 23 and wounding 27. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history (until Virginia Tech).
- 1999 – 20 years ago next week, a man his neighbors described as “strange and violent” brought a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun and a .380-caliber handgun into the Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth and opened fire, killing 7 parishioners and wounding 7 more.
- 2014 – After an argument about a 10-day leave request, an Army Specialist took his .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol into Fort Hood and managed to kill 3 and injure 12 fellow soldiers.
- 2016 – During a peaceful Black Lives Matter march, a gunman ambushed police officers who were working to protect the protesters. Using an AK-74 semi-automatic rifle and a semi-automatic handgun, he killed 5 and injured 11 officers and civilians. Except for 9/11, this shooting is still the deadliest incident for U.S. law enforcement.
- 2017 – A man with tactical gear and an AR-556 semi-automatic rifle entered the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs. He killed 26 (including a woman who was 8 months pregnant) and wounded another 20. This is still the deadliest mass shooting in Texas and the deadliest American church shooting in modern history.
- 2018 – A school shooter at Santa Fe High School in a Houston suburb used 12-gauge shotgun, snub-nosed revolver, and homemade explosives to kill 10 people (eight students and two teachers) and wound 13 others. This is now the third-deadliest school shooting in the U.S. (behind Columbine and Stoneman Douglas).
- 2019 – We’re still grieving the recent shootings in El Paso and Midland/Odessa, happening less than a month apart, that left 29 dead and 49 wounded.
For the sake of brevity, I left out many others. But as this tragic list shows, Texas has had almost every kind of mass shooting imaginable—from snipers and school shooters to domestic violence and race hatred. And yet, Texans refuse to be leaders when it comes to reducing gun violence. The gun culture here is so toxic that our “open carry” laws make it difficult to even report someone who walks into a Walmart with a semi-automatic rifle because by law he has a “right” to be there with his gun. The Texas GOP is firmly in the pocket of the NRA and Texas Democrats are so nervous about the gun narrative in the Lone Star State that they rarely proposed any kind of gun control (Beto O’Rourke is a one of the rare exceptions).
If Texas truly wants to be a player on the national stage in the coming years, voters need to elect leaders brave enough to stand up to the NRA and say “Enough!” If we don’t, then the bragging and tough talk is all hat and no cattle.