From today’s Texas Tribune:
In the past few years, Texas Republicans have been quick to consider a crackdown on gun violence after a mass shooting.
They did so in 2018 after a 17-year-old entered Santa Fe High School and killed 10 people. Then again in 2019, when two mass shootings weeks apart occurred in El Paso at a Walmart and then in Midland and Odessa after a dismissed worker opened fire.
But when lawmakers have reconvened in Austin in the months after a mass shooting, those same leaders tend to fall silent on any restrictive measures when it comes to guns. In the last two legislative sessions, Texas legislators have loosened gun laws, most notably by passing permitless carry in 2021, less than two years after mass shootings in El Paso and Odessa took the lives of 30 people.
Now, after 19 children and two adults were killed Tuesday in a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, lawmakers are again facing the same questions: Could this have been prevented and how can the state avoid yet another mass shooting?
The gruesome attack is the deadliest school shooting in Texas history and occurred a little less than seven months ahead of the 10-year anniversary of a similarly horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, where 20 first graders and six adults were killed, the largest mass shooting at a K-12 school ever.
“It’s astounding to me,” said state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat from San Antonio whose district includes Uvalde. “We’re supposed to create things. We’re supposed to create legislation to keep people safe. By God, to keep children safe. And here we’ve done exactly the opposite.”
Read the complete story here.