Texas Governor Greg Abbott was booed on Sunday when he made his way to a memorial that President Joe Biden attended outside of the elementary school where two teachers and 19 students were killed in Uvalde, Texas. Cries of “we need help,” “we need change” and “our children don’t deserve this,” could be heard from the crowd.
Those cries, that criticism, is well deserved after years of GOP inaction on gun control. Ben Gonzales, of Uvalde, told USA Today that he isn't a gun activist or gun control advocate. "I own firearms to protect my home. But there needs to (be) somewhere in the middle where we can meet and make a change,” he said.
Republicans have been repeating the same weak explanations and theories in light of recent mass shootings as they have in those of earlier years, none providing actual federal action to prevent such tragedies.
RELATED STORY: Police at Uvalde left the shooter in the classroom for an hour while they refused to go in
GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw, of Texas told CNN's Dana Bash that “it's hard not to see how someone doesn't get fired” after it took border patrol to do the job of local police. They had refused for more than an hour to enter the room where children were being massacred. My question for Crenshaw and the countless Republicans like him looking practically everywhere to assign blame but their inaction on gun control is: Which GOP elected officials should voters fire first?
In his interview with Bash, Crenshaw made apparent his opposition to any federal law that would take guns out of the hands of those at risk of harming themselves or others. He deemed what’s known as a red flag law as enforcing the law before its “been broken.”
Crenshaw also made a point in saying that he knows not to judge the person who has to respond in real time to a tragedy like the one that happened un Uvalde but that it "does seem clear that protocols were not followed."
"This isn't a training problem. We have very clear training doctrine on this," Crenshaw said. "The situation changes for a barricaded shooter if there are innocents inside. You have to put away your sense of self-preservation and go through that door.
“The training clearly states you might get shot, but the guy behind you might be able to get in and save innocent people.”
Just to summarize so far: According to Crenshaw, guns aren’t the problem and police training isn’t the problem.
Still, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Sunday that it will be reviewing law enforcement's response to the shooting and publishing a report of its findings.
“At the request of Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, the U.S. Department of Justice will conduct a Critical Incident Review of the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24,” Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said in a news release. “The goal of the review is to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events.”
While Democrats have been pushing for gun reform for decades to try to stop officers from even having to make such difficult decisions, Republicans seem to believe they already have the answer—do next to nothing.
RELATED STORY: Fox News offers up 49 of the most pathetic ‘solutions’ to gun violence after Texas massacre
Crenshaw used part of his interview with Bash to contend AR-15s aren’t weapons of war. “Having been to war and having used many many weapons of war, I don't really classify these rifles as weapons of war,” he said. “We use them, (...) but they’re more our self defense weapon.”
Rep. Mo. Brooks told “Fox News Sunday” that back in his day they didn’t have mass shootings but today they’re much more common, he thinks because of a decline in “moral values” and “respect for human life.”
“There are many times when I went to school with a shotgun in my car,” he said. “Why? Because I just got through duck hunting. There are other teenagers my age at that point in time that also brought their weapons to school, and they had been hunters too (...).”
Brooks’ claim of a past moral superiority failed to account for the fact that back in his day Black people were massacred and had been massacred for centuries but their lives weren’t viewed as worthy enough to account for.
