Texas Students Pressure Republicans On Gun Violence With Large Protest


In Texas, college students pressured lawmakers to permit a vote on a invoice to lift the age restrict on semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21 with giant protests at San Antonio Metropolis Corridor.

They had been joined by members of the San Antonio Metropolis Council, together with Mayor Ron Nirenberg, based on Texas Public Radio information metropolis corridor reporter Joey Palacios.

“The scholars are demanding HB 2477 be given a vote within the Texas Home. The invoice would increase age limits on semi-automatic rifle purchases from 18 to 21.”

The “Increase the Age Act” was launched by State Rep. Tracy King of Uvalde and was handed out of the Texas Home Choose Committee on Group Security a number of days in the past. Right here’s the celebration after that achievement, which concerned getting two Republicans to vote for it (primarily a miracle):

Republican gun coverage is difficult at work in Texas, the place lawmakers have authorised greater than 100 payments loosening gun restrictions since 2000. Gun associated deaths within the state are at a stage “not seen for the reason that Nineties.”

Final Saturday, a neo-Nazi white supremacist sporting a patch studying “right-wing dying squad” used an AR-15-style rifle to kill eight folks and wound seven others at an Allen, Texas mall. That mass taking pictures is within the tragic shadow of the Uvalde mass taking pictures one yr in the past, throughout which 19 kids and a couple of academics had been slaughtered.

Kat Vargas, a volunteer with the Texas chapter of Mothers Demand Motion, stated in a press release, “We appear to be in an limitless cycle of gun violence taking the lives of our kids and neighbors whereas our lawmakers do completely nothing to forestall it. We don’t and mustn’t need to reside this fashion.”

Republican Governor Greg Abbott is clinging to the Republican speaking level in regards to the second modification being sacred and pivoting to psychological well being as the difficulty, which in fact is senseless since each nation has psychological well being challenges, however not relentless mass shootings and gun violence as we do.

It’s the weapons. It’s additionally gun tradition, as latest research have proven that looser gun legal guidelines correlate with larger ranges of crime and violence, even when that violence doesn’t contain a gun. That truth, in and of itself, condemns the reckless gun tradition nurtured right into a illness on this nation.

Many critics of Abbott accused him of being a hypocrite, saying he reduce psychological well being providers in Texas after he redirected psychological well being cash to fund “Operation Lone Star,” which WFAA describes as “an costly border mission meant to gradual unlawful immigration.”

Nevertheless, they notice that Texas “instantly replenished” the funds by shifting federal coronavirus assist to the company. So it’s not correct to accuse Abbott of chopping these funds.

In the event you’re side-eyeing self-styled cowboy Texas-can-do-it-alone Abbott for utilizing “federal assist” to repay cash he took to fund what is going to little question be a merciless and ineffective present mission on the border, honest sufficient. However he did use fed cash to fill within the cash he used for his present.

“The most important critique of Texas Republicans could be their continued opposition to increasing Medicaid underneath the Reasonably priced Care Act,” Rice College political scientist Mark P. Jones informed WFAA, which identified that greater than 1 million folks in Texas would achieve entry to psychological well being assist with the growth of Medicaid (an Obamacare program).

So, that’s a variety of speak from Republicans in Texas about psychological well being, whereas they maintain out as one of many few states left that refuses to increase Medicaid.

One yr in the past, a San Antonio Police spokesperson expressed concern about an “upward development in gun violence after second double murder in a single week,” however stated it was exhausting to find out if “constitutional carry” was the “root trigger.”

“Constitutional carry,” which had turn into regulation lower than a yr previous to the upward development in gun violence, is a really deceptive label for what is definitely reckless endangerment of the general public. The “regulation” permits individuals who can legally personal a gun to hold firearms and not using a license or coaching. It’s really weaponized “Unlicensed Carry.”

Even probably the most staunch Republican NRA members I’ve interviewed in actual life acknowledge the necessity for coaching on a weapon like a gun. Unlicensed carry is a license to kill. The navy trains relentlessly to make use of weapons that Republicans insist 18 yr olds ought to have, sans any coaching. This can be a patently pro-death stance.

“What this did was permit folks with out background checks, with out coaching being allowed to hold firearms,” Louis Wichers, vice chair on the board of Texas Gun Sense, informed KENS5.

Gun legal guidelines have far-reaching influence, as evidenced by new analysis from the College of Michigan: “(S)tates that forestall home violence offenders from having weapons cut back the entire variety of intimate accomplice homicides, not simply homicides with weapons”.

When all appears misplaced within the morass of corruption that’s overtaken U.S. politics and threatens world democracy, younger folks proceed to offer hope that change continues to be attainable.

Exhibiting as much as demand change is step one, with out which nothing will occur. Younger individuals who have grown up within the age of faculty shootings are too aware of the implications of the U.S.’s grotesquely obscene lack of gun legal guidelines.