05 September 19
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05 September 19
FOCUS: Amanda Marcotte | Texas Republicans Love Their Guns - and Simply Don't Care About the Body Count
Amanda Marcotte, Salon
Excerpt: "After the latest mass shooting, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has nothing to offer but empty words - and looser gun laws."
Amanda Marcotte, Salon
Excerpt: "After the latest mass shooting, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has nothing to offer but empty words - and looser gun laws."
EXCERPT:
n the span of three years, there have been at least six major mass shootings in Texas. Eighty-one people have died in these incidents. Nearly 100 people were injured, some in ways that are debilitating. I don't live in Texas any longer, but these attacks feel personal all the same: The El Paso shooting happened in the neighborhood where I grew up, and my mother's family lives in the area where the latest West Texas shooting took place. People are understandably terrified by these random crimes that end the lives of people who were simply out shopping or in church or out for the day with their families, but unfortunately, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has nothing but empty words to offer to the public.
After so many mass shootings during his tenure, Abbott clearly feels he needs to be seen appearing to take action. But make no mistake: These words are empty noise. Abbott and the Texas Republican Party, which has a death-grip on power in the state, have no intention of taking any meaningful action to stop mass shootings — or any kind of shootings — in their state. On the contrary, while the cities of Midland and Odessa were still reeling from the effects of a man driving around shooting strangers on the streets, a new slate of laws loosening restrictions on guns were going into effect.
It's still unclear how Seth Ator, the man who killed seven people on Saturday before he was killed by police, obtained his weapons. Ator had a minor criminal record and, according to Abbott, had failed a background check when trying to purchase a weapon legally.
Ator himself seems to have been a mass of waving red flags that, in a saner system, should have been cause to remove any guns he owned a long time ago. Ator's neighbor said she and her husband called Ator "El Loco" because he was always shooting animals from his house. Once he came to her house, she said, threatening her with a gun. She claims police didn't do anything about it because he had no legal address.
