Ten days from now, we will pause on the first anniversary of the Uvalde school massacre and remember the 19 students and two teachers who were gunned down by an 18-year-old man who days earlier had legally purchased two AR-15 style assault weapons and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
The mass shooting also will be remembered for the inept response of dozens of Texas peace officers who huddled safely in a school hallway and failed to confront the shooter until long after his deadly rampage.
It’s hard to focus our mourning on Uvalde when so many other mass shootings continue to pile up in the state and across the country. One thing has not changed from one mass shooting to the next: Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick continue to evade accountability. Both stubbornly refuse to address the state’s weak gun laws that allow aggrieved young men and others to freely obtain weapons of war to turn on their neighbors in schools, churches and stores.
We are all in the crosshairs, wherever we gather in public. No one doubts there will be more mass shootings in Texas. It’s just a matter of when and where.
Most recently there was the May 6 mass shooting at an outlet mall in the north Dallas suburb of Allen. A gunman opened fire outside the busy shopping center, killing eight people and wounding at least seven others before a nearby policeman fatally shot the gunman, preventing further slaughter.
Abbott called for prayer, but said nothing about legislators convened in Austin using the state’s worsening mass shootings crisis to address the state’s loose gun laws.
On April 28 in the town of Cleveland 55 miles outside of Houston, a Mexican immigrant previously deported multiple times grew angry when a Honduran neighbor asked him to stop firing off rounds outside his house, disturbing the neighbors’ sleeping baby. The gunman entered his neighbor’s house with an AR-15 assault weapon and opened fire, killing five before fleeing. He was arrested April 28.
Abbott reacted to the mass shooting by noting that those involved — both the suspect and his victims — were “illegal aliens,” a statement he later retracted.
For all his lack of any empathy or willingness to do what’s right rather than what is politically expedient, Abbott reached a new low with his groveling pledge to pardon Daniel Perry, a former U.S. Army sergeant who was sentenced to a 25-year prison term Wednesday after jurors found him guilty of murder in the July 2020 fatal shooting of U.S. Air Force veteran Garrett Foster, a Black Lives Matter protester.
Foster was participating in a peaceful march in Austin, protesting police brutality two months after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for a prolonged time, leading to asphyxiation and heart failure.
Foster was legally carrying an AK-47 while walking in the protest, which illustrates the ridiculous state laws permitting such behavior. Who needs a loaded assault weapon at a peaceful rally? Perry drove his vehicle into the protest and opened fire on Foster with a handgun. Perry later claimed Foster had pointed his assault weapon at him, a claim witnesses refuted. The jury agreed with witnesses, and with Perry’s psychologist, who described him as “basically a loaded gun” with PTSD and other psychological problems, according to the Texas Tribune coverage of the trial.
“I am working as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sgt. Perry,” Abbott announced on Twitter after soon-to-be-fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson and other far-right conservatives called out Abbott for not intervening on behalf of Perry in the murder trial.
Then, in a pre-sentencing hearing, Perry’s racist and threatening social media posts and texts were released, which has since caused Abbott to retreat and say the state pardon board will handle the case review. That contradicts his earlier message on Twitter, declaring, “Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney.”
How driving a vehicle into the middle of a protest and opening fire when no one else is firing is justifiable “stand your ground” behavior escapes me.
Without seemingly so much as a cursory review of the case, Abbott responded to his conservative media critics by calling on the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to expedite a pardon request for him to approve. It was pure and simple a political play to his gun-nut base, one he now appears to regret.
Abbott may be constrained in this case by the now released evidence of Perry’s anti-Black postings and texted threats. Carlson is certainly not a concern for Abbott now that Fox has taken away his platform.
A state House committee last week did surprise everyone watching the Texas legislature, where there are very few good surprises, by voting to let a proposed gun reform bill be placed on the official calendar. That’s a long way from surviving a full House vote and moving to the Senate, which did not happen, but for a moment, a single moment, it did feel like an answered prayer for the victim families from Uvalde present at the committee hearing.
Perhaps Abbott is right. Perhaps we should pause to pray. It may be all we have in Texas.
