US gun control

Subterms

    More stories

    • 200 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Too much fear, too much grief’: Biden visits Uvalde amid scrutiny of police response to shooting

      by

      ‘Too much fear, too much grief’: Biden visits Uvalde amid scrutiny of police response to shooting Kamala Harris calls for ban on assault weapons after attending last funeral of those killed in Buffalo attackJoe Biden lamented “too much violence, too much fear, too much grief” after the latest US mass shooting as he prepared to visit Uvalde, where police face intensifying scrutiny for waiting outside the classroom where a teenage gunman with an assault rifle killed 19 children and two teachers.The US president and first lady, Jill Biden, arrived in Uvalde, Texas, on Sunday morning, both dressed in black. They visited the informal memorial of flowers and notes that has accumulated outside Robb elementary school, where the carnage took place last Tuesday.Then they will meet families who lost loved ones, and those who survived the gunman’s rampage, followed by first responders, after a relatively long gap between the tragedy in Uvalde and the presidential visit.On Saturday, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, called for a ban on such military-style assault weapons for the general public, while she attended the last funeral of the 10 people killed just two weeks ago in a racist attack on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, carried out with a similar gun.Kamala Harris calls for assault weapons ban: ‘We are not sitting around waiting’Read moreThe center of Uvalde was busy but hushed on Saturday afternoon as a long line of people lined up quietly in heat approaching 100F, waiting to place flowers and other tributes at the hurriedly-created memorial of crosses set up for those killed five days ago at nearby Robb elementary school.An ambulance was standing by and a state trooper assisted members of the public who came to mourn.But as well as grief there was anger that has been simmering since Tuesday, when local police waited at least an hour, while young children trapped with the gunman repeatedly called 911 and parents outside pleaded with officers to go in, before federal agents arrived and shot the 18-year-old local man dead.The police department specifically assigned to oversee school security in the area, led by Pedro Arredondo, appeared not to have followed state protocols advising that an “officer’s first priority is to move in and confront the attacker”.0The head of the Texas department of public safety, Steve McCraw, admitted on Friday afternoon that “of course it was the wrong decision” for local officers to wait to enter the classroom.And Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, said he felt “misled” and was livid after several days of conflicting accounts about the law enforcement response.Biden spoke about the tragedy in Uvalde during a commencement speech he gave on Saturday morning at the University of Delaware, his alma mater.“As I speak, those parents are literally preparing to bury their children. In the United States of America. Too much violence, too much fear, too much grief,” said Biden and called the Uvalde and Buffalo mass shootings acts of “evil”.“In the face of such destructive forces, we have to stand stronger. We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer. We can finally do what we have to do to protect the lives of our people, and of our children,” he said.‘We have to act’: can Biden cut through the gridlock on gun control?Read moreThe US has received increasing criticism from the international community and gun safety advocates domestically over continual mass shootings and the failure of lawmakers to pass gun control laws that could mitigate them.Biden and fellow Democrats have been repeatedly out-maneuvered in the last decade by Senate Republicans, many of whom are backed by the powerful gun lobby.Harris called on the Congress to act, saying: “We are not sitting around, waiting to figure out what the solution looks like. We know what works on this. It includes – let’s have an assault weapons ban.”In Uvalde, Alfred Garza was among several parents who gathered outside the elementary school after reports that a shooting was under way and witnessed officers delaying a move to storm in. He tried not to get in the way. Other parents begged officers to take action.His daughter Amerie Jo, 10, was among those shot dead before federal agents arrived and killed the gunman, Salvador Ramos.“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it just took too long to get in there and, you know, had they gotten there sooner, and someone would have taken immediate action, we might have more of those children here today, including my daughter,” he told CNN.Warning signs about Ramos had been evident prior to his attack, with reports of threatening posts on social media and aggressive interactions with teenage peers.But he was able legally to arm himself with assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition shortly after he turned 18 this year.His mother, Adriana Martinez, gave a short television interview earlier in the week, saying in Spanish: “I have no words to say. I don’t know what he was thinking,” adding: “He had his reasons for doing what he did. Please don’t judge him. I only want the innocent children who died to forgive me.”TopicsTexas school shootingBuffalo shootingUS gun controlJoe BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘We have to act’: can Biden cut through the gridlock on gun control?

      by

      ‘We have to act’: can Biden cut through the gridlock on gun control?The president has long fought for restrictions but deep divisions have often left him hamstrung Less than two hours after returning from a five-day trip to Asia, a visit meant to signal American strength, Joe Biden walked slowly into the Roosevelt Room of the White House, visibly shaken, to address one of the nation’s greatest weaknesses.Another bloody mass shooting in America. This time in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers, making it the deadliest shooting at an elementary school since the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.It was just 10 days after a gunman had targeted Black shoppers at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 people. And just nine days after a gunman opened fire in a Taiwanese church in southern California, leaving one dead and several wounded.“Why?” Biden said, his voice rising in anger. “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”Nearly a decade after watching Republicans defeat a gun control package he helped develop as vice-president in response to the shooting at Sandy Hook, Biden’s wrenching search for answers to this uniquely American tragedy continues.He entered the White House with a sweeping plan to address gun violence, but too-narrow margins in Congress to see them enacted. Once again, the president finds himself stuck between a desire to act and the limits of power to do so.Washington’s shame: how previous bids to tighten gun laws have failedRead more“I am sick and tired of it,” Biden said this week. “We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage.”On Sunday, Biden will travel to Uvalde to honor the lives lost. He will grieve with the community as a father who knows the pain of burying a child. But as the president, it is unclear what he can deliver.Biden said on Wednesday that “the idea that an 18-year-old can walk into a store and buy weapons of war, designed and marketed to kill, is, I think, just wrong,” declaring: “The second amendment is not absolute.”Any hope he had of action from lawmakers on Capitol Hill was seemingly tempered by decades of false starts and failures. He called on Congress to pass “reasonable” gun safety laws and urged the Senate to take a “modest step” by confirming his nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).“We’re always looking to do more,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said on Thursday. “But right now we need the help of Congress.”Encouraged by the White House, Democrats have thrown themselves into the gun control debate anew. A bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by the Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, who was the congressman representing Sandy Hook at the time of the massacre, began talks this week. But they face long odds in drafting a bill that can garner the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Senate filibuster.Speaking at a gun safety rally on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Murphy acknowledged a feeling of “dejà vu” in the wake of these tragedies, when vows of “never again” are followed by gridlock and inaction. He asked supporters for help building the public case for action, urging a “popular uprising of citizens” to pressure Republicans.Democrats say the discussions will not be open-ended and have vowed to force Republicans to take votes on the issue if no compromise is reached in the coming weeks.“I’m not going to negotiate for ever,” Murphy told reporters after the rally.Hours later, Senate Republicans blocked legislation introduced by Democrats that would have strengthened the federal government’s response to domestic terrorism and white supremacy in response to the racist attack in Buffalo, a stark reminder of the deep divisions between the parties on how to address gun violence in America.The White House pointed to a flurry of executive orders Biden has signed as part of the administration’s “whole of government” response to the nation’s “epidemic of gun violence”. One would strengthen regulations on “ghost guns”, homemade firearms without serial numbers that are increasingly recovered at crime scenes. Another launched a team of strike forces to crack down on illegal firearms trafficking in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and DC.Additionally, they have launched efforts to prevent veteran suicides by firearm, increase community policing and tighten regulations on “stabilizing braces” that have been used in mass shootings.But the steps fall short of Biden’s campaign promises to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and his embrace of a federal gun buyback program to take more weapons off the streets.In the absence of congressional action, gun safety advocates believe Biden can do more with his bully pulpit and his pen.“We need the president to bring this issue to the national level consistently, even when there aren’t mass shooting tragedies rocking the nation,” said Po Murray, chair of Newtown Action Alliance, formed after the Sandy Hook massacre. “He needs to make this issue a daily priority until we start reducing gun deaths and injuries in this country.”Murray is among the advocates urging the White House to establish a federal office of gun violence prevention and issue a national emergency declaration to more forcefully confront the issue. Others have called on Biden to appoint a gun “tsar” or use his executive authority to expand background checks on firearm purchases and reform the ATF.Greg Abbott backs out of NRA appearance amid fury over eventRead moreJohn Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said Biden had been the “strongest gun-sense president in history”. But he is urging the White House to issue an executive order that would clarify the definition of gun sellers so that more would be required to conduct background checks on prospective buyers.During a press briefing this week, Jean-Pierre stressed that this had been a top priority for Biden for much of his political life. “Look, this is a president, as I’ve said already, who has been working on gun violence, comprehensive gun reform, since he was a senator.”But a reporter pushed back: “Isn’t that more of an indictment” that he has been working on this issue for so long and so little has changed?Jean-Pierre replied that Biden had done “more via executive actions than any president in their first year” to combat gun violence, but understands that we need to do more.”“We are angry as well,” she said.Biden’s frustration is borne of decades of experience working on the issue, one of the most divisive in American life. As a senator, he played a key role in passing the 1994 assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004 when Congress failed to renew it.Years later, when Biden was vice-president, Barack Obama tasked him with the mission of developing a fresh wave of gun control measures in response to Sandy Hook. The team proposed a slew of executive actions that Obama ultimately signed, but a parallel legislative effort failed in the Senate in 2013.Matt Bennett, a vice-president of the Democratic thinktank Third Way, who worked with Biden’s team on gun control legislation after Sandy Hook, said Biden knows his options are limited without Congress.“When he ran the taskforce in 2013, they did their damnedest to find every single thing Obama could do by executive order, but there’s just not that much,” he said. “Trust me, they’re looking under every rock.”Wading too deeply into the legislative debate as talks begin on Capitol Hill could upset the already-fragile negotiations, he added.“Biden understands that this can’t be the ‘Biden bill’ or else it has no hope,” Bennett said.In Uvalde, Biden will once again play the role of first responder to a nation reeling from tragedy. But in the days and weeks that follow, advocates hope the president will seize this moment to relentlessly pursue meaningful policy reform.“He can be savvy but he cannot be complacent,” said Peter Ambler, executive director of Giffords, a gun violence protection group founded by the former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt that left six people dead, “because we cannot continue this cycle of mourning.”TopicsTexas school shootingJoe BidenUS politicsUS gun controlUS CongressfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 213 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      America, how long will you sacrifice your children on the altar of gun worship? | Jonathan Freedland

      by

      America, how long will you sacrifice your children on the altar of gun worship?Jonathan FreedlandThis devotion to the right to bear arms is horrifyingly outdated. It brought terror to Texas – and it will happen again and again America’s great appeal to the world was its promise of possibility. It presented itself as virgin territory, a tabula rasa where a society could form anew, free of the past, and where individuals might do the same, reinventing themselves, renewing themselves, starting over. It was a myth, of course: it took no account of those people who were already there, and whose lives and lands were taken, or of those who had been brought to America in shackles. But it was a powerful myth all the same, one whose grip on the global imagination lives on: witness the success of the stage show Hamilton in seducing yet another generation into the romance of a new world and its revolutionary creation.But now we see something else: a country uniquely burdened with the dead weight of its past, and therefore powerless either to deal with a danger in its present or to make a better future. The land of possibility stands paralysed, apparently unable to make even the smallest change that might save the lives of its young.The evidence came again this week in the Texan town of Uvalde, where an 18-year-old walked into an elementary school and killed 19 children, aged between eight and 10, and two of their teachers. It was the 27th school shooting in the US this year, and it’s not yet June.There are so many stats like that. In the US, 109 people die of gun violence every day. There have been more mass shootings in the US in 2022 than days of the year. There are more guns in America than there are people. It was Uvalde this week, but last week it was Buffalo, where another 18-year-old walked into a supermarket and killed 10: his animus was directed at black people rather than children, but his method was the same.Each time, the satirists at the Onion bring out the same headline: “‘No way to prevent this,’ says only nation where this regularly happens”. The joke gets at something critical and curiously un-American: a debilitating form of fatalism.After Uvalde, I spoke to several seasoned Washington hands, asking if the horror of this latest massacre might at last prompt action. No, was the reply. Of course, each side makes the same ritual moves. Democrats deliver stirring, even heartbreaking speeches. Republicans then accuse Democrats of “politicising” tragedy, preferring instead to offer “thoughts and prayers” to the victims, before suggesting every possible remedy except the obvious one: this week we had Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas demand an end to the menace of unlocked back doors in schools. Not one of them will so much as entertain the idea of, you know, making it a tiny bit harder for a disturbed teenager to get hold of a military grade assault weapon.The easy explanation for this refusal to act is money, specifically the cash put in the hands of pro-gun politicians by the National Rifle Association (whose annual convention, addressed by Donald Trump, is going ahead this weekend in Houston, Texas, with the massacre in Uvalde deemed no reason to reschedule). But that is too pat. The NRA has been weakened by a slew of recent scandals, yet Republican politicians still refuse to pass even the mildest gun safety measures. The glum truth is that it’s not a lobby organisation that has a hold on them so much as pro-gun voters, who have concluded that if a politician dares suggest, say, the massively popular move of requiring universal background checks – looking for a record of instability or past violence – before selling someone an AR-15, they have taken the first step towards government confiscation of citizens’ guns.That, of course, is seen as an unconscionable violation of the constitution’s second amendment, which enshrines the right to bear arms. Never mind that no Democrat is advocating anything like the action Britain or Australia took after mass shootings, all but banning guns, and never mind that it’s hard to believe that the framers of the constitution were intent on allowing unhinged teenagers access to weapons that could kill en masse and in seconds. That slippery slope argument, combined with the sacred status accorded to the second amendment and the constitution itself, has immobilised Republican politicians.Their opposition matters because they have far more say than the number of votes that they win might suggest. Under the US system, every state gets two senators, no matter how many or how few people live in that state. It means mainly white, mainly rural states with few voters – but strong views on guns – exercise an effective veto on more populous, more diverse, more urban states, whose tens of millions of voters are desperate for gun safety measures. That’s why even the modest proposals that followed the Sandy Hook school massacre of 2012 died in the Senate. And that’s why so many feel fatalistic about the prospects of change, resigning themselves to another massacre and then another.Some try to keep the fatalism at bay, insisting that with the NRA weak, now is the time to strike. They propose a march on Washington of a million parents and their children. Or a consumer push to demand the Republicans’ corporate donors withhold their cash until the party acts on guns. Or maybe even international pressure, with foreign leaders raising gun violence with their US counterparts the way they’d raise human rights abuses when meeting representatives of China. The US Senate banned assault weapons back in 1994 (before allowing the ban to expire a decade later): if they did it once, they can do it again.But those defiant voices are in the minority. Most believe that the state of America’s politics has condemned the US to suffer a fate the rest of the democratic world has avoided. Beyond the mortal threat that represents to Americans, that despair, that sense that political effort is futile and that change is impossible, endangers US democracy and the country’s very sense of self.That it arises out of the constitution – its second amendment and its design of the Senate – is a bitter irony. The whole point of the American revolution enshrined in that document was to forge a society that could make the world anew, able to adapt to the present unbound by the strictures of the past. In the words of the great English-born revolutionary Thomas Paine, who argued that circumstances always changed from one generation to the next: “As government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it.” Today’s America is sacrificing the living in the name of the dead of two centuries ago. It is betraying its founding ideal. It is offering up its young to placate ghosts from a time long gone.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsUS gun controlOpinionUS politicsNRAYoung peopleSchoolscommentReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Eighteen-year-old Americans can’t drink. Why can they buy assault rifles? | Ross Barkan

      by

      Eighteen-year-old Americans can’t drink. Why can they buy assault rifles?Ross BarkanThe solution to mass shootings isn’t increased policing or an expanded surveillance state or runaway anti-terrorism legislation. It’s making it harder to buy a gun The mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers, was a reminder of all the ways the United States has failed its people. A nation that still retains promise, America is now held captive by political polarization and a fanatical gun lobby. There are more firearms in the US than people.It’s important to remember, as these mass shootings continue to occur, that the problem is guns: all of them, not just assault rifles, but handguns too. The assault weapon ban, which lapsed in 2004, should be renewed. Somehow, it must become much harder in this country to buy a weapon. No 18-year-old, especially one with such a deeply troubled history as the alleged Texas gunman, should be able to buy a firearm.My daughter was killed at Dunblane. I know that gun controls save lives | Mick NorthRead moreAfter the racist shooting at a Buffalo supermarket earlier in the month, the Democratic establishment temporarily swung away from the scourge of guns to the scourge of online misinformation and how to crack down on it. Democrats of all ideological stripes swiftly backed new legislation that would “improve intelligence-sharing” between law enforcement agencies, building on a bill that passed the House Judiciary Committee that would create permanent offices within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and FBI to “monitor, investigate and prosecute cases of domestic terrorism”. The proposal would also improve training for local police to detect and investigate what they believe is terrorism.Since the motivations of the Texas killer are more opaque, there has been less talk about such measures. This is for the best. Measures to empower federal surveillance state apparatuses inevitably backfire, leading to the abuse of civil liberties, particularly endangering vulnerable populations. American Muslims after 9/11 understand the danger of unleashing DHS or the FBI on so-called terrorism suspects. The term remains vague enough to encompass all kinds of people who may, for whatever reason, appear suspicious to overzealous federal officials.Using mass shootings to expand the power of DHS would be a serious error, one that would inevitably punish the left when Republicans take power again. Donald Trump or another rightwing president would not hesitate to reclassify various progressive organizations or movements as domestic terrorism, especially if they reside beyond the political mainstream.The focus must remain on guns. It’s understandable, in one sense, that Democrats would shift to fretting about expanding the purview of a Bush-created agency: taking action is immediately plausible. There may be enough votes to pass the bills and invite bipartisan support. Banning assault weapons or even instituting increased background checks has been a political dead-end for so long because the gun lobby owns the Republican party and many rural voters are gun-owners.This is the intractable challenge. Democrats do not have the votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. The recurrence of mass shootings – Sandy Hook, Parkland, El Paso – has not budged Republicans, who continue to deny the reality that America is the only affluent nation that grapples with such gun violence and death. Mental health initiatives are fine, but the problem is the number of people who are able to, without any effort, buy guns and shoot them. Mass slaughter is not as easy with a knife. Armed security at every school building in America, logistically impossible, still could not stop a determined murderer with military-grade weaponry.The handgun dilemma must also be solved. Democrat-run states have cracked down on them and are chasing after the ghost-gun manufacturers that create untraceable weapons. But guns continue to flow across state lines, avoiding detection from police. Gun violence of the more regular kind plagues cities everywhere. Every one of those murders is deeply tragic.If the federal government is paralyzed, Democrats must redouble their efforts in various state legislatures to flip chambers and win executive offices. This may be the only answer. States individually can do a great deal on the gun control front. If limiting access to guns is unpopular in conservative states, Democrats must find ways to campaign on other issues and implement safety laws once in power. For starters, there should be more bipartisan consensus around raising the age of gun purchases. If 18-year-olds cannot legally drink, why can they buy firearms? Since most violent crime is committed by the very young, cutting off guns to teenagers could make a small difference.No matter what, Democrats cannot succumb to nihilism or seek dangerous, stopgap measures that infringe on civil liberties. Runaway terrorism investigations will not stop gun violence. Making it far harder to acquire a weapon will.
      Ross Barkan is a journalist based in New York City. He is the author of Demolition Night, a novel, and The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS gun controlGun crimecommentReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      How lawmakers in thrall to the NRA stifle gun safety laws

      by

      How lawmakers in thrall to the NRA stifle gun safety laws The powerful lobbying groups spent nearly $5m million last year to expand gun rights while limiting restrictions on who can have a firearm and how they can carry itIn Texas, where guns are already a deeply ingrained part of the cultural landscape, a powerful political force is helping to stifle regulations aimed at limiting access to high-powered firearms.The National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of America’s most powerful lobbying groups, spending nearly $5m last year to expand gun rights while limiting restrictions on who can have a firearm and how they can carry it.Now, the NRA is again at the center of a heated American debate over guns after an 18-year-old with two rifles he purchased legally walked into an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two adults.That was Tuesday. Today, the NRA will welcome 55,000 members at its annual meeting in Houston, just a few hours from Uvalde. Attendees will browse exhibits of firearms paraphernalia and hear from Republican politicians like Texas senator Ted Cruz, Texas governor Greg Abbott and former US President Donald Trump.A majority of Americans – 54% according to a CBS News poll before the shooting in Uvlade this week – want stricter gun control laws, but that majority is highly partisan. Just 27% of Republicans say the same.Among Texans that margin is even slimmer. In a 2019 University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll after mass shootings in El Paso and Midland-Odessa, just 51% of registered voters in Texas said they wanted stricter gun control laws.The majority of gun owners are responsible with their weapons, says Nicole Golden, the executive director of the state’s only organization advocating for policies to reduce gun violence. Texas Gun Sense was founded in 2007 by survivors of a mass shooting at Virginia Tech, and expanded in 2013, after the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.Now, Golden’s bipartisan group focuses on finding common ground with gun owners to support initiatives at the state and local level. They work with the Texas Department of Public Safety, for example, on a campaign to promote safe gun storage to keep firearms locked up and away from others.“I don’t think the issue is hopeless,” Golden said. “You have to redefine what success looks like. You can’t give up because I don’t think giving up is an option.”She said that this week, like after other mass shootings, her organization has seen an influx in new interest from Texans. Many gun owners, she says, recognize that America’s epidemic of gun violence needs some kind of change. After a 2018 mass shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, that killed 10 churchgoers, Abbott suggested new regulations including “red flag” laws that would allow courts to take away someone’s guns if they pose a threat to themselves or others.Golden said she was excited to work with the governor on the issue, but it quickly failed to pick up any traction in the state capital.“We watched those things fail, and this time there’s been no interest at all of dealing with safe gun laws,” Golden said. “It can often feel like you’re just beating your head against the wall or shouting into the void.”There is little doubt that Texas has a historical obsession with fire arms dating back to it being a frontier state where white settlers used guns to take land from Indigenous groups and used them to fight the Mexican government, and then the US government when the state seceded during the American civil war.“We have this long tradition of firearms,” said Jerry Patterson, a former Texas land commissioner and NRA member who helped push for concealed carry in the state after a mass shooting at a Luby’s restaurant in 1991.But that tradition isn’t just a Texas-specific phenomenon, says Harel Shapira, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin who studies gun culture in America. He says that from a very young age, gun ownership becomes part of many people’s identity across the country. Families go hunting together. Fathers teach their children to shoot and how to be safe with firearms.“Guns are a source of death, but also a source of [cultural] life in America,” Shapira said. Regulations may address who can purchase or use guns, he said, “but the question of American gun culture is a larger issue.”He said that in recent decades, gun rights have become entrenched as a rightwing political issue. If you want to win as a Republican, he said, you have to embrace pro-gun rhetoric. Plus, that culture of firearms means that when mass shootings create a call to regulate guns, gun owners often have an emotional reaction.“It’s very personal, it’s very visceral, it’s very emotional,” Shapira said. “They see it as an assassination of their character.”That culture has helped build strong support for groups like the NRA in Texas. There are 5 million members nationwide, but the group says that 400,000 of them are in Texas. The NRA did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about its support in the state.Last year, the organization cited financial struggles in an effort to leave its headquarters in New York to reorganize in the more friendly political climate of Texas.That bid at reorganization was part of a bankruptcy suit tied to an effort by New York’s attorney general to put the group out of business, according to the Associated Press. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the NRA laid off dozens of employees while its leaders used the group’s funds as their own piggybank, including a $17m post-employment contract for NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre.Yet those problems, Patterson said, won’t change how the NRA or politicians think about access to firearms in America. He said that in Texas and across the US, primary electoral politics force candidates to take extreme positions on all kinds of issues, like gun rights. Not all gun owners may approve of extreme measures, he said, but the rhetoric that brings primary voters to the polls swings to the right in Republican races.“There are a lot of people on the gun control side that are not as excited about things as they appear to be,” Patterson said. “But they vote for it anyway because the elections are decided in the primary.”The NRA’s recent financial troubles didn’t stop the group from spending $786,052 in the 2020 election cycle. The group has already spent $217,596 in 2022 – paid exclusively to Republican candidates.Three of the five lawmakers that have benefited the most from gun rights groups like the NRA are Texans, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks US political spending. Cruz has received the most – $442,333 since joining the US Congress in 2012. Texas’s other senator, John Cornyn, has received $238,875 during his tenure in the US Senate. Pete Sessions, a congressman from Waco, Texas, has received $202,926 in donations from the NRA and similar groups.Those donations were smaller in 2020, as the organization began facing some of its mostly self-inflicted financial hurdles. Cornyn received $9,900 from the NRA in the last election cycle. Cruz was not up for re-election at that time and did not receive any donations, according to OpenSecrets.Uvalde’s representative in the US House is Tony Gonzales, who said earlier this week that he was not interested in discussing gun policy so soon after 19 children were killed in his district. The NRA donated $4,950 to his campaign in the 2020 election cycle.Abbott, Texas’s governor, is one of the most gun-friendly governors in the US. Even after mass tragedies like in Uvalde, he has signed laws making guns more and more accessible in the state. Last year, after signing a law allowing most Texans to carry a gun without a permit, he bragged that the measure “instilled freedom in the Lone Star State”.He is up for re-election this year. The NRA donated $2,500 to his campaign during his last race in 2018.Much of the rhetoric used by these and other conservatives after mass shootings like in Uvalde rely on a playbook partially developed by the NRA more than two decades ago. Soon after the shooting at Columbine high school in 1999, the NRA was scheduled to host its annual convention in nearby Denver.According to a secret tape released by NPR last year, the group’s leaders met to consider a response, focusing on de-politicizing the tragedy and convincing lawmakers to delay action until the immediate firestorm of bad press had passed. It’s a playbook the group has returned to again and again as more Americans have been killed by gun violence.After so many mass shootings – more than 200 in the US already this year – the responses on both sides of the issue have become predictable, Patterson said. He, like many political observers, doubt any real change will come from the aftermath of the horrors in Uvalde.“We should do that which makes a difference,” Patterson said. “I fear we’re going to do the same shit we did before. It’s the cliches, the bumper stickers, and that’s all that’s going to happen this time.”TopicsNRATexas school shootingUS gun controlUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Texas school shooting overshadows primaries: Politics Weekly America – podcast

      by

      The killing of at least 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in the town of Uvalde on Tuesday has reignited the gun control debate in the US. Jonathan Freedland speaks to the chief correspondent for the Washington Post, Dan Balz, about why, after yet another tragedy involving firearms, the Republican party is still unwilling to talk gun reform

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Archive: CNN, NBC, Channel 4 Listen to the Guardian’s Weekend podcast Listen to Today in Focus Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

    • 188 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Texas officials deflect questions on ‘missing hour’ when gunman was in school – latest updates

      by

      A briefing Thursday afternoon by the Texas Department of Public Safety created more questions than answers about a “missing” hour during which the Uvalde gunman was in the school but not confronted by law enforcement officers.Victor Escalon, the department’s regional director, deflected reporters’ questions about why officers did not attempt to stop the gunman in that time.During the short, and sometimes chaotic briefing, Escalon appeared defensive when challenged about the delay. Parents of victims have expressed distress at the apparent hesitation of law enforcement to storm the school, and some begged officers to move in.“There’s lot of possibilities,” Escalon said, insisting that investigators needed time to interview officers from multiple jurisdictions who were eventually present.“At the end of the day our job is to report the facts. We don’t have all the answers. We’re not there yet”.But in laying out a preliminary timeline of the shooting, he did indicate that the gunman appeared to have been able to gain entry to the school through an unlocked back door, and that, contrary to earlier reports, there was no armed police officer on duty at the campus when the shooter walked in and began Tuesday’s deadly rampage that killed 19 students and two teachers.“The majority of the gunfire was in the beginning,” Escalon said, adding that officers first on the scene prioritized calling for back up and trying to evacuate students and children. “He did not respond [to officers trying to speak to him],” Escalon said.Escalon ended the briefing by promising to get back to the media when he had more information to give.‘More could have been done’: Texas police under scrutiny over response to school shootingRead moreWe have more details on Joe Garcia, who died of an apparent heart attack two days after the Robb elementary school gunman killed his wife, 46-year-old Irma Garcia, a teacher who was sheltering with her students. Guadalupe “Joe” Garcia – the husband of 46-year-old Irma Garcia, who was shot and killed while sheltering children in her classroom – died two days after the mass killing that shattered his family, a cousin of his wife confirmed on a verified GoFundMe page.The Garcias had been together for more than 30 years. They were high school sweethearts before marrying and having four children, the cousin, Debra Austin, wrote.“I truly believe Joe died of a broken heart and losing the love of his life … was too much to bear,” Austin wrote.The Garcias’ nephew, John Martinez, said via Twitter that the couple’s children – ages 13, 15, 19 and 23 – had now lost both parents.Irma Garcia taught fourth grade at Robb. On her profile on the school’s website, she wrote that she and Joe, 48, enjoyed barbecuing, listening to music, and vacationing at the nearby community of Concan, which sits along Texas’ Frio River.The couple’s first child – one of two boys – was completing boot camp with the Marines, and their second, another son, was attending Texas State University, according to the profile. The two youngest children, both daughters, are a high school sophomore and a seventh grader.Husband of teacher killed in Texas school shooting dies of heart attackRead moreA dispatch from the Guardian’s Dani Anguiano who is reporting from Uvalde: The tears started before anyone even spoke. Inside a Uvalde county building that usually hosts the rodeo in this part of south-west Texas, young children and parents cried and held each other. Together, they waited for a group of pastors to offer some words of comfort for their unfathomable loss.This week in Uvalde began with a mood of celebration. The high school graduation was to be held on Friday – giant senior portraits lined the lawn outside city hall. Younger children were wrapping up the school year as well, attending classroom parties and awards ceremonies. But on Tuesday, life in this largely Latino town was upended when a gunman barricaded himself in an elementary school classroom and slaughtered 19 children and two teachers.With all schools in the district cancelled for the remainder of the year and the town mourning for those it lost, hundreds of people came to a vigil at the Uvalde County Fairplex arena on Wednesday. There, pastors, seated on a stage on the dirt normally reserved for horses, tried to offer solace to their community.“Pray for those children that saw what happened to their friends … pray for each of us as we help them,” said Pastor Tony Grubin, feeling nervous as he addressed the crowd of adults and children, many of them wearing red school shirts. “Evil will not win.”‘Evil will not win’: sorrow and disbelief as Uvalde mourns its childrenRead moreThe AP has more details on Jacklyn Cazares, a nine-year-old girl who was killed in the shooting alongside her cousin, Annabelle Rodriguez:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Jacklyn Cazares hadn’t yet reached her 10th birthday, but she was already a tough-minded “firecracker” always looking to help people in need, her father said. Jacklyn and her second cousin, Annabelle Rodriguez, were especially tight with three other classmates at Robb elementary school.
      “They are all gone now,” Javier Cazares said. “All her little best friends were killed too.”
      Jacklyn would have turned ten on 10 June. Despite her young age, she was equal parts tough-minded and compassionate.
      “She had a voice,” her father said. “She didn’t like bullies, she didn’t like kids being picked on. All in all, full of love. She had a big heart.”More about the victims here: ‘He was just a loving little boy’: the victims of the Texas school shootingRead moreAs criticisms mount over the police response to the massacre, one mother who was outside of the school as the attack was unfolding says that officers handcuffed her after she urged police to enter.Angeli Rose Gomez, who has children in the second and third grade in the school, told the Wall Street Journal she drove 40 miles to the school when she heard there was a shooting and that when she arrived, “The police were doing nothing. They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere.”She told the paper that after a few minutes of her urging officers to act, federal marshals approached and put her in handcuffs, alleging that she was being arrested for interfering in an active investigation. She said she was released after she talked to Uvalde police officers she personally knew who convinced the marshals to let her go. At that point, she said she entered the school and got her two children. Gomez also told the Journal that after the gunman was killed, she saw police use a Taser on a local father who was approaching a bus to find his child. Gomez described it this way: .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}They didn’t do that to the shooter, but they did that to us. That’s how it felt.”A mom of two children at Uvalde was put in handcuffs after urging police and law enforcement to enter the school.Once freed from her cuffs, she jumped the school fence, ran inside and sprinted out with her kids.New from @WSJ: https://t.co/SYdgysw0gF pic.twitter.com/ZCadllw9aT— Megan Menchaca (@meganmmenchaca) May 26, 2022
      Officials have not offered a clear explanation as to why the gunman was in the school for up to an hour before he was stopped and killed, even while officers were on scene. Authorities admitted that police officers had assembled outside the room where the gunman was located, but did not make any attempt to break through the door during that hour. Instead, they decided to pull back and wait until a specialist tactical unit arrived, while evacuating other children and staff from the building. More on the police response here: ‘More could have been done’: Texas police under scrutiny over response to school shootingRead moreBiden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said the White House was “disappointed” that Republicans in the Senate blocked the domestic terrorism prevention bill that the Democratic-controlled House last week. .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We need Congress to act. We need Congress to advance commonsense measures that we know will save lives.She later added, “Commonsense gun safety laws work. We know this. They save lives. The public supports this. They are behind this.” A reporter asked whether Biden would be doing anything differently to reflect the urgency of the gun violence crisis, the press secretary responded, “The president has already declared gun violence to be a public health epidemic. This is a president who has been working on gun violence, comprehensive gun reform since he was a senator.” When the reporter followed up and asked whether it was indictment of Biden that he has been involved in the issue for so long and so little has changed, she said, “He understands we need to do more, but Congress also has to act … The president is doing everything that he can to get this done.” The White House is declining to weigh in on the concerns about the Texas law enforcement response to the school shooting. Asked at the briefing whether Joe Biden would call for an investigation into police’s actions at the shooting, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, responded: “The president has the utmost respect for the men and women of law enforcement … We won’t pre-judge the results from here at this time.”The gunman was in the school for up to an hour before he was killed, even while officers were on scene, and officials have not offered a clear explanation of the timeline or what police were doing during that hour. Asked about the NRA convention scheduled to begin in Texas, Jean-Pierre said: .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}It’s not about the convention. What is inappropriate is that the leadership of the National Rifle Association has proven time and time again that they are contributing to the problem of gun violence, not trying to solve it … [They are] marketing weapons of war to adults. They don’t represent gun owners who know we need to take action. The NRA and their allies have stood in the way of [gun safety measures]. It is shameful. About the response from some Republicans calling for more armed people, the press secretary said, “If more guns were the solution, we’d be the safest country in the world.”Hi all – Sam Levin here, taking over our live coverage: The White House has announced that Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will be traveling to Uvalde, Texas on Sunday to “grieve with the community”. Officials did not have further details on the visit, though a press briefing is due to start momentarily. Follow along here for updates. Here are today’s developments so far from Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two teachers:
      Investigators at an afternoon media briefing were unable to say why the gunman was not confronted during a “missing hour” between entering the school and being killed by a SWAT team.
      Parents and other locals expressed distress at the apparent hesitation of law enforcement to storm the school, with some having begged officers to move in as the massacre was still ongoing.
      However, US Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz said agents “didn’t hesitate” when responding to the shooting. “They came up with a plan. They entered that classroom and they took care of the situation as quickly as they possibly could,” he told CNN.
      Democratic senator Chris Murphy called for a “popular uprising of citizens” to pressure Republicans to support gun laws following the shooting.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said he would delay a vote on background checks for weapons buyers while bipartisan talks progressed, but warned Republicans he would move ahead if no deal was reached.
      March for Our Lives, the student-led gun reform activist group set up in the wake of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Florida, is planning protest events in several US cities on 11 June.
      Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz confronted a British reporter and angrily left an interview after he was asked why school shootings like the one in Uvalde happen so often in the US.
      Before attacking the school, the gunman, named as Salvador Ramos, shot and wounded his grandmother at her home. Neighbors called police when she staggered outside and they saw she had been shot in the face.
      The gunman sent three online messages in the half-hour before the mass shooting, according to Texas governor Greg Abbott. The messages were sent via Facebook and “discovered after the terrible tragedy,” company spokesman Andy Stone said.
      The gunman had legally bought the rifle and a second one like it last week, just after his birthday, authorities said.
      Thanks for following. My colleague Sam Levin will guide you through the next few hours. Just days after the deadliest mass school shooting in Texas history, the National Rifle Association (NRA) – America’s leading gun lobbyist group – will meet a few hours away in Houston on Friday.Ashton P Woods says they are not welcome in his home town.“These people are coming into our community. The city of Houston needs to kick them out,” said Woods, an activist and founder of Black Lives Matter Houston. “We have to be just as tough about these things as they are.”Woods is helping organize one of several protests planned just outside the George R Brown Convention Center, where NRA members will browse exhibits of firearms and gun paraphernalia and hear speeches from Republican leaders including Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas.The goal of the Black Lives Matter protest, Woods said, is to “get loud” outside while powerful speakers take the podium inside. Woods said the issue of firearms was particularly important to the civil rights group that primarily tackles issues of police brutality in America.“Whether it be death by suicide, death by cop, death by mass shooter, we need to control the access people have to deadly weapons,” Woods said. “These things are interconnected.”Democratic Texas congressman Colin Allred was another on Wednesday to attack the NRA conference, and its prominent attendees.“It’s a disgrace that these Republicans are choosing to attend the NRA convention, when they should be in their respective legislatures doing everything in their power to prevent the next attack like this,” he said in a video address from the Democratic party’s war room.“When it comes to Ted Cruz, let’s just say he’s one of the biggest recipients of gun lobby spending and was the top recipient of campaign donations from so called gun rights backers in the 2018 election cycle.“We know who Ted Cruz is serving, and it’s not Texans.”Full story:Outrage as NRA to gather in Houston just days after Texas school massacreRead morePolice in Toronto shot and injured a man who was walking down a street carrying a gun in a city neighborhood, and five nearby schools were placed on lockdown, officials in Canada said, according to Reuters.The suspect, whose condition was not immediately clear, was described as a male in his late teens or early 20s, the Toronto police department said. The incident occurred in Port Union, a residential area north of Toronto’s city center. Three of the schools remained on lockdown Thursday afternoon, and two others were declared “hold and secure” due to ongoing police work. A briefing Thursday afternoon by the Texas Department of Public Safety created more questions than answers about a “missing” hour during which the Uvalde gunman was in the school but not confronted by law enforcement officers.Victor Escalon, the department’s regional director, deflected reporters’ questions about why officers did not attempt to stop the gunman in that time.During the short, and sometimes chaotic briefing, Escalon appeared defensive when challenged about the delay. Parents of victims have expressed distress at the apparent hesitation of law enforcement to storm the school, and some begged officers to move in.“There’s lot of possibilities,” Escalon said, insisting that investigators needed time to interview officers from multiple jurisdictions who were eventually present.“At the end of the day our job is to report the facts. We don’t have all the answers. We’re not there yet”.But in laying out a preliminary timeline of the shooting, he did indicate that the gunman appeared to have been able to gain entry to the school through an unlocked back door, and that, contrary to earlier reports, there was no armed police officer on duty at the campus when the shooter walked in and began Tuesday’s deadly rampage that killed 19 students and two teachers.“The majority of the gunfire was in the beginning,” Escalon said, adding that officers first on the scene prioritized calling for back up and trying to evacuate students and children. “He did not respond [to officers trying to speak to him],” Escalon said.Escalon ended the briefing by promising to get back to the media when he had more information to give.‘More could have been done’: Texas police under scrutiny over response to school shootingRead moreThe chief question arising from that brief briefing is why law enforcement did not enter the school and try to save children in the hour between the gunman entering the school and his being killed by a SWAT team from Customs and Border Protection.Victor Escalon of the Texas Department of Public Safety did not discuss what happened in that hour in any detail.He did say “the majority of the gunfire was in the beginning” and said the gunman then fired to keep officers at bay but did not respond to attempts to negotiate. He also said officers made efforts to evacuate other children and teachers.Escalon’s words might suggest that most of the children who were killed were killed shortly after the gunman entered the room. Nonetheless, officers seem not to have attempted to take the gunman down.Escalon answers questions.It appears the door to the school the gunman used was unlocked, he says. “The majority of the gunfire was in the beginning,” Escalon says. The gunman then fired to keep officers at bay but did not respond to attempts to negotiate.There was not a readily available armed officer at the school when the gunman arrived, Escalon says.“At 11.30am the PD got a crash and a man with a gun and you have responding officers.”He can’t say yet what happened in the next 10 minutes with certainty, he says, adding: “There’s a lot of possibilities.”All the officers who were present need to be interviewed, Escalon says, asked about questions about what was done to stop the shooting which are growing with the hour.A British reporter asks: “Is it accurate eyewitnesses were urging police to go in while a SWAT team was awaited, and even asking to borrow police armour to go in and try to rescue their children themselves?” “I’ve heard that information that we have not verified it,” Escalon says.Questions are shouted but Escalon has no answers. He says he needs time.That briefing didn’t clear up much about how police responded to the shooting.Victor Escalon, regional director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, begins the briefing. He says law enforcement are “hurting inside”, as are other officials and of course the victims and family members and describes how an investigation works.He recounts what is known about the shooting.Salvador Ramos’s grandmother is still alive, Escalon says, in stable condition after being shot in the face.The shooter entered Robb elementary school at 11.40am, after shooting at the building and “numerous rounds are discharged inside the school”. Four minutes later, Uvalde police are inside. They take rounds, move back and get cover, and call for additional resources, as the gunman enters a classroom.Escalon says that during the time the calls for help are being made, officers are also evacuating teachers and students. Approximately an hour later, Escalon says, US Border Patrol tactical teams arrive and shoot and kill the suspect.Now it turns into a rescue operation, he says, the officers asking themselves, “How do we save these children?”Escalon says reports the gunman was confronted by an officer on the way into the school are not accurate. He says he will take questions.A briefing has begun in Uvalde. We’ll follow it here.The chief of the Uvalde police department, Daniel Rodriguez, has just issued a statement defending his officers over the response time to the Robb elementary school shooting.Rodriguez said officers “responded within minutes” and that several of them received non-life threating gunshot wounds from the suspect.A press conference in Uvalde is scheduled to begin within the next 15 minutes or so, and you can expect questions about the timeline of the massacre.NEW: The chief of the Uvalde Police Department has a released a statement saying his officers responded “within minutes” along with school officers. “I know answers will not come fast enough,” he said. pic.twitter.com/8m7GvLZQo0— Tony Plohetski (@tplohetski) May 26, 2022
      Read more:‘More could have been done’: Texas police under scrutiny over response to school shootingRead moreMore desperately sad news from Uvalde, as if things weren’t bad enough already:Joe Garcia, the husband of Irma Garcia, one of two teachers shot and killed in Uvalde, TX on Tuesday, has reportedly suffered a fatal heart attack. Joe and Irma were high school sweethearts and married 24 years. They leave behind four children. pic.twitter.com/Rlk0M2B8nR— Ernie Zuniga (@Ernie_Zuniga) May 26, 2022
      His death was confirmed on Twitter by Garcia’s nephew John Martinez, who asked for prayers for his family:EXTREMELY heartbreaking and come with deep sorrow to say that my Tia Irma’s husband Joe Garcia has passed away due to grief, i truly am at a loss for words for how we are all feeling, PLEASE PRAY FOR OUR FAMILY, God have mercy on us, this isn’t easy pic.twitter.com/GlUSOutRVV— john martinez ❤️‍🔥 (@fuhknjo) May 26, 2022
      Here’s more on Joe Garcia and this tragic, apparently deadly case of broken heart syndrome.Republicans in the senate have, as expected, blocked the domestic terrorism prevention bill that passed the Democratic-controlled House last week.Chuck Schumer, the senate majority leader, changed his vote to no in a procedural move so he can bring the measure back again. Senators voted 47-47, well short of the 60 votes needed for it to advance.The bill was seen as the Democrats’ opening attempt to pass some kind of gun restrictions following the massacre of 10 Black people by a white supremacist gunman at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, almost two weeks ago.It would have established a new domestic terrorism office at the homeland security department that would track and analyze domestic terrorist activity, and require regular reporting of threats from white supremacists and neo-Nazis.Republicans argued the bill was partisan and not needed because of existing laws to tackle domestic terrorism.One of the hosts responding to the Texas shooting on late-night TV on Wednesday, Jimmy Kimmel, became visibly upset as he did so. “Once again, we grieve for the little boys and girls whose lives have been ended and whose families have been destroyed,” he said.While the right will “warn us not to politicise” the shooting, Kimmel added, it’s important to remember “they know what they’ve done and they know what they haven’t done”.The “very least we can do” is insist upon background checks for those seeking to purchase a gun, a law that has been stalled in Congress. “They won’t pass it because our cowardly leaders just aren’t listening to us, they’re listening to the NRA, they’re listening to those people who write them checks who keep them in power,” Kimmel said.“If your solution to children being massacred is armed guards, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on,” the host said before reminding viewers of the many times armed guards and police officers have not prevented school shootings.Kimmel then zeroed in on the Texas senator Ted Cruz, who is scheduled to speak at an NRA event in Houston this weekend. “I refuse to believe he’s unaffected by this,” he said. “He’s not a monster, he’s a human being.”To Cruz and the many others who refuse to recognise the danger of guns, Kimmel said: “It’s OK to admit you made a mistake, it’s not just OK, it’s necessary.”He continued: “Do I think these men are brave people? No I don’t but man I would love it if these guys surprised me.”Kimmel also said “it isn’t a time for moments of silence, this is a time to be loud”, before reminding viewers there have been 27 US school shootings this year and it’s still only May. “How does this make sense to anyone?” he asked. “These are our children.”Kimmel on gun control: ‘Our cowardly leaders just aren’t listening to us’Read more More

    • 175 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Democrats looking for 'common ground' with Republicans on gun control, says Murphy – video

      by

      Senator Chris Murphy has spoken with confidence on ‘finding that common ground’ with Republicans to support gun laws following the Uvalde school shooting on Tuesday.
      Murphy called for a ‘popular uprising of citizens’ to put pressure Republicans when he attended a Thursday gun safety rally and press conference on Capitol Hill.
      Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is expected to bring expanded background checks and potentially ‘red flag’ laws to Congress that allow people to petition a court to temporarily take guns away from a person at risk of hurting themselves or others.

      Texas shooting: latest updates
      How the push for US gun control rises and falls with each school shooting More