Gun problem is a governance problem
Was there a moment when it dawned on you that the Uvalde massacre of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers is not going to result in any meaningful change in our nation’s gun laws?
I suspect that there wasn’t. As a nation, we’ve already accepted the subtext that plays in the background of all mass shootings: These deaths are merely the collateral damage that we incur for maintaining our right to own a firearm.
If the murders of 20 6- and 7-year-olds at Sandy Hook didn’t move us to action, why would 19 more deaths of children in Uvalde?
In other words, in the aftermath of the heartbreaking slaughter last week, few expected Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to champion bold new plans to prevent further school shootings.
Still, it was jarring to hear Abbott minimize the death toll in Uvalde by comparing it to the murder rate in Chicago. When you start a sentence with “I hate to say this,” it’s probably a signal that you shouldn’t. But this is a lesson that Abbott hasn’t learned:
“I hate to say this, but there are more people who are shot every weekend in Chicago than there are in schools in Texas.” This is misleading, at best, and it’s cold comfort to the families in Uvalde who lost their children. Abbott was relying on an oblivious rationale for doing nothing about gun laws. Nevertheless, he conceded that there are things that can be done to prevent school shootings. Abbott said, “Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge. Period.” The government, he said, needs to find ways to target this mental health challenge and do something about it.
He pointed out that in a 40-county region around Uvalde, there are no mental health hospitals. He noted a great need for a “physical mental health care facility in this region,” as well as “more personnel, more strategies” to deal with the challenges of mental health.
What else can we do? Abbott referred to 2019 legislation regarding “school hardening,” measures that “should” make it more difficult for shooters to enter schools. Sen. Ted Cruz said that after the Santa Fe, Texas, school shooting in 2018, parents of some of the eight students killed stressed to him the importance of making schools invincible, even if it requires turning them into armed camps defended by security guards and teachers with guns.
In other words, despite their reluctance to pass laws that will keep high-powered, high-capacity weapons out of the hands of school shooters, our state and national leaders regularly tout measures that they say could stem the bloodshed.
Which leaves us with one question: Why haven’t they enacted them? Republicans have been in charge of Texas since 1994, the last year a Democrat won a statewide election. If Abbott knows that a 40-county area surrounding Uvalde has no mental health care facilities, why aren’t Texas Republicans responsible for that failure? And if school “hardening” is the answer, why haven’t schools in Texas been hardened? Robb Elementary School in Uvalde certainly wasn’t hardened, and reporting from the Texas Tribune and elsewhere indicates that the district in Uvalde is more typical than exceptional.
If better mental health care facilities and hardened schools are the Republican answers to school shootings, why don’t we have them in Texas, where Republicans have been in charge for three decades?
Some Republicans blame the school districts, suggesting limitations on the powers of the Republican legislature and governor. But the Republicans in charge have not hesitated to impose their will on all Texas schools with regard to the teaching of critical race theory, gender issues and other matters that should be in the hands of educators. Republicans claim to support better mental health care and hardened schools, but I suspect that they themselves understand these are actually disingenuous dodges that deflect attention from the real issue. In any case, Republicans — who have little faith in government — are just not very good at governing, in Texas or elsewhere. And therefore the carnage continues.