Texas is all about the ‘sanctity of life,’ except where guns are involved

Texas abortion restrictions are some of the most stringent in the country. On June 24, Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the one-year anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade with the observation of Sanctity of Life Day, a state holiday created in 2022. Paxton said, “Texas will proudly continue as a nationwide leader in the protection of the unborn, and the [office of the attorney general] will be steadfast in its mission of defending our state’s pro-life laws.”

Meanwhile, Texas has the distinction, according to the Gun Violence Archives, of being number one in the country for mass shootings in 2023, with a total of 59. After the May 24, 2022, school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 schoolchildren and two teachers were killed, the state made no progress on gun laws. An initiative to raise the age for owning a semiautomatic rifle from 18 to 21 was not advanced to the House floor. It is indeed perplexing, in a state that claims the sanctity of life to be paramount, that the Republican-controlled Legislature has repeatedly loosened gun restrictions in the face of mass shootings.

Conduct the following experiment: Take a map of the United States and color code it for states with the most restrictive abortion laws. Then do the same with states with the most lax gun laws, and you get largely the same map. So it would seem that in Texas and many other states, sanctity of life is a selective phrase, not applying to those of us already living, especially children who have already been born.

Texas has the distinction of being number one in the country for mass shootings in 2023.

MELISSA GALLINARO

Easton