Even Old West had more gun laws
This state and its children continue to be at the mercy of Second Amendment absolutists.
In Uvalde, the children of Robb Elementary — those who survived the mass shooting, that is — are back in school. A newly installed 8-foot-tall security fence is meant to protect them from the horror that invaded their world in the spring. The fence, of course, will do nothing to shield them from the horrific memories and the emotional scars that may be lifelong.
In Austin, Gov. Greg Abbott barrels ahead in his campaign for a third term. He’s sticking to his guns, so to speak, despite promises to the people of Uvalde that things would be different.
In the aftermath of the May 24 massacre, angry, grieving family members pleaded with the governor to support measures that would keep militarystyle weapons out of the hands of 18year-olds like the one who slaughtered their children and two of their teachers. Abbott gave them their answer a few days ago, contending on the campaign trail that the courts do not allow lawmakers to raise the legal age to buy AR-15 style rifles and other guns crafted to kill human beings as quickly and efficiently as possible.
“There have been three court rulings since May that have made it clear that it is unconstitutional to ban someone between the ages of 18 and 21 from being able to buy an AR,” Abbott said.
Legal experts say he’s wrong. On this particular matter, dead wrong.
Meanwhile, the culture of guns that Abbott has proudly helped mold — as state supreme court justice, Texas attorney general and as governor — continues apace. Here’s a sampling:
• In Detroit a few days ago, a man randomly shot four people in four separate shootings. The attacks left three people dead, one wounded;
• In Bend, Ore., a 20-year-old man walked onto a Safeway parking lot, firing rounds from an AR-15. Continuing into the store, he shot and killed an 84-year-old customer and a 66-year-old store employee who tried to disarm him. Before heading to Safeway, the young man had published at least 35 blog entries announcing his intention. He was hoping to kill 40 people, he said.
• Early on a Sunday morning here in Houston, a man dressed all in black set fire to a building and then began shooting at people fleeing the fire. He killed four and injured two;
• In Indianapolis, a Dutch soldier in this country for a training was shot and killed at a hotel. Two others were wounded;
• At least 16 mass shootings (involving four or more people shot or killed) took place nationwide during Labor Day weekend, leaving at least 10 people dead, according to Gun Violence Archive.
“How many more officers have to be shot? How many more community members have to be killed before those in our community take a stand?” Phoenix police chief Jeri Williams asked after the recent mass shooting in her city. A gunman had emerged from a hotel and begun randomly shooting, killing two people and wounding two police officers.
It’s a good question, an urgent question. Apparently, the answer is, quite a few. More than 100 people die every day from gun violence; five are children. Like the proverbial frog plopped into a simmering pot of water set to boil, we’ve gradually grown accustomed to senseless death at the barrel of a gun.
Think of that Dutch soldier, shot and killed at random in downtown Indianapolis. Something like that is almost unimaginable in his native land. The Netherlands, along with every other advanced nation, has to deal with crime of various sorts — two brothers go on a stabbing spree in Canada, killing 10 and wounding 18 — but other nations are relatively free of gun violence.
“It’s not because their citizens are more loving or kind,” the late James Atwood, a Presbyterian minister, wrote in his 2012 book “America and Its Guns.” It is something else, something simple: Holland, Japan, Britain, Australia, New Zealand — the list could go on — do not permit easy access to guns.
“Should their citizens be able to get a gun as easily as we can,” Atwood writes, “they would suffer the same levels of gun deaths; they would feel entitled to use violence against the immigrants who cross their borders; their children, on occasion, would be afraid to go to school for fear of being shot; they too would grieve over driveby and mass shootings; they too would worry that fired workers might go postal; they too would spend enormous amounts of money paying medical bills for paraplegics and the exorbitant costs of incarceration for the shooters.”
With more than 400 million guns in circulation, all of us, including gun owners, are at the mercy not only of gun misuse but also of gun zealots who place their right to own guns — any type of gun — before every other issue. Second Amendment absolutists, they cannot concede that every constitutional amendment is limited in some way, including their favorite one.
The absolutists would have had trouble in the Old West a century and a half ago. Had they lived in Dodge City, Kan., for example, a city ordinance would have prevented them from bringing their guns to town. The ordinance was drafted with rip-roarin’ Texas cowboys in mind, who, after a long, arduous cattle drive from down this way, were inclined to shoot up the place when they got to town.
Contrary to the Hollywood stereotype, common sense often prevailed in the actual Old West. And somehow, the Second Amendment was not considered defiled.
In Tombstone, Ariz., in 1881, city marshal Virgil Earp, his two deputized brothers and their pal Doc Holliday shot it out with the Clanton brothers at the O.K. Corral, because the brothers were flouting the town’s law requiring visitors to disarm.
“Tombstone had much more restrictive laws on carrying guns in public in the 1880s than it has today,” UCLA law professor Adam Winkler told Smithsonian Magazine in 2018. “Today, you’re allowed to carry a gun without a license or permit on Tombstone streets. Back in the 1880s, you weren’t.”
Winkler, a constitutional law scholar who researches gun policy, was one of the experts who told the Chronicle’s Taylor Goldenstein last week that Abbott is wrong when he says that laws imposing age restrictions on weapons are unconstitutional.
“It’s an unsettled question whether states can restrict guns to people under 21,” he said. “There are court cases going both ways. … This is one of many issues the Supreme Court is going to have to take up in the coming years.”
These days, relying on the U.S. Supreme Court for sensible rulings on gun policy may be as iffy as Doc Holliday’s tubercular health. Nonetheless, at least seven states have gone ahead with legislation raising the legal purchase age for sales of long guns. Texas, of course, is not one of them.
We’ve built that fence in Uvalde, though. That’s good, and yet those youngsters have to walk through the gate on their way home every afternoon.
Thanks to the Second Amendment absolutists, they step into a world where guns are everywhere. It’s a world where men, women and children have gotten shot going to the grocery store, enjoying an outdoor concert, worshipping in a church or synagogue, strolling through a mall, watching a Fourth of July parade, sitting at their desk in the workplace, eating in a restaurant, riding the subway, enjoying a picnic in the park.
That’s the world we have made for those Uvalde kids and their counterparts around the country. For their sake, at least, it’s a world that needs extensive remodeling, starting with such relatively small steps as raising the legal age for buying assault weapons, imposing universal background checks and relying on “red flag” laws to keep guns out of the hands of those deemed by a judge in a court of law to be a danger to themselves or others. In bondage to a gun obsession, we need a little Wild West common sense.