Texas Republicans Move to Weaken Gun Laws After 8 People Were Mowed Down at a Mall

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed last year at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Another eight people were viciously shot at a mall last weekend. That does not include any of the other 200-some mass shootings across the country just this year—many of them in Texas. And in the context of all this, Texas Republicans are barely allowing even moderate gun reforms explicitly supported by the families of the victims in Uvalde to pass—and now they are trying to actively weaken gun laws even more.

Texas’s Community Safety House Committee has advanced House Bill 2960, which rolls back existing law directing the postage of “No Firearms Allowed” notices on properties, and consequently would relax prosecution of those found violating such notices. The committee passed the bill 7–3, and the bill has been placed on the general calendar to be voted on by the entire state House.

To be clear, this is the same committee that did not advance a bill to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15-style rifle from 18 to 21 until concerned mothers and families of the victims of the Uvalde school shooting flooded the Capitol Monday, demanding that lawmakers push it forward. Even so, five Republicans voted against advancing it; the bill moved forward at a vote of 8–5.

What cannot be understated is the sheer culpability of these conservatives. The shootings at Uvalde and the Allen mall are just drops in Texas’s bloody bucket. In 2018, a 17-year-old student killed 10 people and injured 13 more at Santa Fe High School. In 2019, two mass shootings took place in rapid succession—one by a white supremacist at an El Paso Walmart, killing 23 people and injuring another 23; another killed seven people and injured 22, including a state trooper and two police officers, in Midland and Odessa.

These and incidents involving hundreds of other victims have revealed, over and over again, how sneeringly unconcerned this party is with, perhaps, stopping the bodies from piling up. It’s almost appalling, given how both Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee both lost individuals they knew personally in recent mass shootings in their state; for some reason, power structures and dollar signs still somehow enrapture Republican politicians to the point they fail to imagine that a stray bullet may just hit close to their home too.

Meanwhile, people in communities like Uvalde have been brought to fend for themselves as statewide Republicans don’t even pretend to advocate for them or the spirits of the loved ones they’ve lost until the national spotlight is on them, as it was on Monday. Even then, Republicans could not unanimously advance a bill that simply decrees that teenagers ought not be able to buy AR-15s.

In the meantime, Republicans are jumping on board to repeal even the most minute and niche gun safety policies, like the simple act of posting “No Firearms Allowed” signs.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott made his first public address Monday since his state was struck by double tragedies—and he spent the entire time demonizing migrants.

A gunman opened fire at a mall north of Dallas on Saturday, killing at least eight people and wounding seven others before authorities shot him to death. The shooter is reported to have held extremist and white nationalist beliefs. The next day, an SUV driver slammed into a crowd outside a migrant shelter in the border city of Brownsville, killing eight people and injuring at least 10 others.

During a press conference at the Austin Bergstrom International Airport, Abbott announced he was deploying a new border control unit to El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley, ahead of when Title 42 ends later this week. Title 42 is a federal immigration policy employed by the Trump administration at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic to expel migrants without having to consider them for asylum. The Biden administration has kept the policy going.

“The cartels are working in collaboration with President [Joe] Biden and the federal government to facilitate that illegal cross-border,” Abbott said. “We are being overrun by our own federal government. Texas is being undermined by our own federal government in our efforts to secure our border.”

Normal stuff for a governor to say as his state still reels from dual tragedies.

Abbot went on to propose penalties such as potential felony offenses for anyone who crosses the border without papers.

His remarks come a week after another time Abbott demonized migrants. On April 28, a man in Texas shot dead five of his neighbors, including a 9-year-old boy, after one of them asked him to stop firing shots in his yard so the family’s baby could sleep. Abbott claimed in a press release that the shooter was “in the country illegally and killed five illegal immigrants.”

The governor came under fire for his statement, which is still up on his website, with critics accusing him of using the tragedy to fearmonger instead of enacting meaningful change.

“There is no limit to the depravity of Greg Abbott and his Texas Republican cronies,” Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement. “To use a mass shooting, in which five innocent souls were slaughtered execution-style … to fearmonger and lie about migrants and the victims’ immigration status.… This type of sick behavior is truly beyond the pale.”

After the most recent tragedies, Abbott similarly has resisted calls for change. He told Fox News Sunday that rather than pass more gun control laws, he would focus instead on mental health issues, a favorite Republican scapegoat for gun violence.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell laid out Republicans’ big plan for 2024: Win everywhere possible.

Republicans are gearing up for the 2024 elections, and they only need to flip two seats to take control of the Senate. McConnell told CNN Monday that they have a few key states they’re focusing on, but really, they just want to win.

“We don’t have an ideological litmus test,” McConnell told reporter Manu Raju. “We want to win in November.”

“We’ll be involved in any primary where that seems to be necessary to get a high-quality candidate, and we’ll be involved in every general election where we have a legitimate shot of winning—regardless of the philosophy of the nominee.”

Republicans have allowed pretty much any and everyone into their party, including election deniers, conspiracy theorists, and just plain liars. But previously, those people had to earn their way into the party mainstream. McConnell has made it clear now that as long as you say you’re Republican, you’ll be welcomed.

McConnell said the GOP would focus primarily on flipping seats in Ohio, where Sherrod Brown is running for reelection, Montana (Jon Tester), West Virginia (Joe Manchin, who has been acting like a Republican anyway), and Pennsylvania (Bob Casey). The minority leader said he’s not confident his party can retake the Senate, but he plans to work hard to try.

Part of that will be backing former President Donald Trump should he secure the Republican nomination again in 2024. McConnell did not explicitly say whether he would support Trump, instead saying he would back whoever the GOP nominates. But he does think that having Trump as a nominee could help Republicans win Senate battles too.

McConnell did not yet have a clear plan for Arizona, where independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema has not yet announced if she will run for reelection. Failed gubernatorial candidate and election-denier Kari Lake, who won Trump’s endorsement, has hinted she will run for Senate on the Republican ticket. McConnell refused to disavow Lake and said that GOP leadership would probably wait to see who wins the GOP primary in Arizona before getting involved.

Even if Lake wins the nomination, “what I care about in November is winning and having an ‘R’ by your name,” McConnell said.

McConnell didn’t seem too concerned with Republicans’ actual policy proposals during the interview. And no matter who runs, Republicans will have a hard battle ahead. A recent Fox News poll found that most voters across the country want increased gun control and abortion rights—two things on which the GOP seems absolutely unwilling to budge. If the Republican Party fails to switch up its policies on these issues, then it may ultimately not matter who its candidates are.

It took masses of concerned mothers and families of the victims of the Uvalde school shooting to convince just two Republicans to get the stones to support incredibly modest public safety regulations.

On Monday, large groups of protesters flooded the Texas state Capitol as one Republican committee chair threatened to kill a proposed bill that would raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15-style rifle from 18 to 21. The bill, endorsed by families of the victims of the Uvalde school shooting, was introduced in February but didn’t even get a wink of hearing time until April.

Cheers erupted in the chamber on Monday as the committee advanced the bill.

Monday was the final day the bill could advance. Originally, the committee chair, Ryan Guillen (a former Democrat), said he was not interested in advancing the bill. In face of the mass protests, he seemed to waver, allowing the bill to go to a vote.

And upon voting, two Republicans swung to vote with the Democrats, advancing the bill on an 8–5 vote.

The moment showcases the power of people to actually demand their government act on the wave of gun violence sweeping the nation, and yet still the appalling fecklessness of Republicans to have forced such protests at all. After Uvalde, Republicans have done nothing. After another mass shooting, they had to be convinced, not empowered, by the people to even advance a bill out of committee.

And even then, five Republicans (a majority of Republicans on the committee) still found it within themselves to look at the families of those who have lost their children to gun violence, and still vote the incredibly modest gun reform down.

Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt doubled down Monday on his decision to veto funding for PBS, accusing the network of indoctrinating children.

Stitt vetoed a bill two weeks ago approving funding for the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, which broadcasts PBS and PBS Kids throughout the state. OETA receives both private and public funding. It offers shows including Sesame Street, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Antiques Roadshow, and PBS Newshour.

When asked Monday on Fox Business to explain his decision to veto OETA funding, Stitt demanded, “Why are we using taxpayer dollars to overly sexualize or indoctrinate children with this type of programming?”

A gubernatorial spokeswoman provided “evidence” of such sexualization and indoctrination to Tulsa World the day after Stitt issued the veto, which was basically just a list of LGBTQ content. She said OETA has aired Pride Month programs in recent years, and two children’s cartoons have included lesbian characters in some episodes. PBS Newshour also ran a segment in which an Indiana couple discussed how much gender-affirming care had helped their daughter.

Unless two-thirds of the state legislature votes to override Stitt’s veto, OETA will shut down in about a year—which could have devastating effects for more rural parts of Oklahoma, warned Friends of OETA board member Ken Busby.

Busby told Tulsa World that OETA is crucial to the state’s emergency alert system, especially for people in rural areas who don’t have cable television. “Our broadcast towers are how we inform a lot of rural Oklahoma about disasters like tornadoes and thunderstorms,” he said.

Republicans have been waging war on anything they deem “woke,” which usually means anything that encourages freedom of thought. A major argument has been that they are trying to protect children. But as moves such as Stitt’s veto show, a lot of their efforts to combat “wokeness” will actually have a detrimental effect on children’s well-being.