Shared from the 11/10/2019 Houston Chronicle eEdition

GUN CONTROL

After El Paso, hard truths — and a ray of hope

In 100 days, nothing has been done — but 2020 elections await

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Marie D. De Jesús /Staff photographer

From Austin to Washington, from the governor to the president, Republican politicians vowed to do, well, something after the Aug. 3 shooting that left 22 dead in El Paso. Then all the leaders wilted away.

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Marie D. De Jesús / Staff photographer

After the El Paso massacre, many asked how God could allow this to happen. But this epidemic of mass violence is not an act of God; it is the lack of action from the government.

Exactly 100 days ago today, 45 people in El Paso were shot. Their scared, trembling families assembled at a middle school nearby in the 103-degree heat. I was watching from just a few feet away when a pastor sat down next to me. He had been helping one of his flock search for missing grandchildren in the aftermath of the massacre at a nearby Walmart. He had gotten the same question all day from parishioners: How could God let this happen?

With his phone, he showed me his answer from Job 34:10: “Far be it from God, that he should do wickedness.” Speaking in Spanish now, we agreed. God was not responsible for this, the deadliest attack on Latinos in American history, the deadliest domestic terrorist attack since Oklahoma City. In the end there would be 22 dead in El Paso and 24 wounded. And here is what has been done in those 100 days since then: Nothing.

From Austin to Washington, from the governor to the president, Republican politicians vowed to do, well, something after the Aug. 3 shooting. President Trump made noises about universal background checks and Gov. Greg Abbott, after another shooting in Odessa, sternly announced that “the status quo is unacceptable.” Then both men wilted away. Trump disappeared into the scandal of impeachment, and Abbott has courageously fought the least powerful among us, the homeless.

In El Paso, Walmart will reopen the store where the massacre took place on Nov. 14, just in time to add those lucrative holiday sales to its $500 billion in revenues — with the blessing of El Paso’s city government. Someday, a memorial will be built in the parking lot, but time waits for no quarterly stock report.

Our institutions —government and corporate alike — never did what their leaders swore they would: to honor the dead, wounded and suffering with more than cheap and ultimately lying words. No matter how far you may live from the site of the massacre, this is a chilling outcome.

Cold lessons have arisen in these last three months. And a glimmer of hope, too. The first lesson? Nobody who’s anybody cares if you or your kids get shot to death at Walmart or Home Depot. That is one of the cold, raw lessons that has arisen in these last three months.

The current crop of Republican leaders do not really care when Americans are massacred — not enough, anyway, to actually act. Why not? Perhaps it’s because it’s the working and middle class who get killed, not their own, their friends or, most important, their donor class. Would Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell be content to do so little if the victims of such shootings as the one in El Paso had been the sons and daughters of the donor class?

A second lesson is related: in the cynical ploy that is contemporary American governance, money talks and everybody else walks. Got billions and want to peel a few hundred million off? Get atrillion-dollar federal tax cut. Got millions and contribute to the governor’s campaign? Get a board appointment to a state agency. Get shot shopping on Saturday? Or your kid gets gunned down at school? All you get is thoughts, prayers and mumbling about mental health.

The third lesson? Neither major political party is immune from cowardice when it comes to guns. When Beto O’Rourke, who is from El Paso, angrily offered a federal ban on the sale of assault weapons and buy back the ones already in circulation, he took just as much of a pummeling from timid Democrats as uncaring Republicans. For Republicans, unfettered gun ownership is a sacred cow. For Democrats even the most modest gun control, so elusive to them for so long, is a golden calf. Both, of course, are merely different versions of the same idolatry: doing nothing while innocent people die.

O’Rourke did misstep, when he said that he was coming for people’s weapons. That wouldn’t even be constitutional, as government can’t take property without offering recompense. But his basic premise namely, that new sales of assault-style weapons should be banned, and existing guns bought back by the government was as simple as it was true.

Even some gun owners favor an assault weapons ban, a lesson he learned at a Buc-ee’s in Katy, in the men’s room, he told me recently. A man walked up to the urinal next to O’Rourke’s and started talking about an assault-weapons buyback. He mentioned that he owned an AR-15. O’Rourke thought for asecond that an argument was to ensue right there as both men did their individual business. But he was wrong. The stranger wanted to talk gun reform. “I realized then I shouldn’t pre-judge that guy.”

And many Democrats, especially Pete Buttigieg, defended calls for more background checks vehemently. That would be nothing but a Vichy victory. The truth, Mr. Mayor is that you’re never gonna stop mass shootings until you get rid of AK-47s and AR-15s. These are the weapons of choice of today’s mass murderers and terrorists. Three of the four mass shootings in Texas under Abbott’s watch have involved one of these weapons, which are just mildly modified, standard-issue weapons of war.

In the final analysis, O’Rourke is simply right and everybody else is simply scared. Americans want these guns off the shelves. Nearly 70 percent of Americans wanted assault weapons banned after the El Paso and Odessa shootings, according to a Fox News poll. And 55 percent of Republicans favored an assault weapons ban after El Paso, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll. Nearly three-quarters of Americans want these guns banned.

El Paso was more than just another mass shooting: It was a terrorist attack, carried out by a white nationalist terrorist who had asingle determination, as he confessed to interrogators: “I wanted to shoot as many Mexicans as possible.”

The president and governor may have overlooked that reality, but it doesn’t change the facts. In Texas 8-in-10 Latinos want assault weapons banned, period. And that leads to an unusual glimmer of hope in this story: Dan Patrick. (I’ll bet you didn’t see that coming.) The lieutenant governor of Texas will never be mistaken, of course, for a socialist who is coming for your guns. He played a key role in loosening gun laws.

But he didn’t get to be a ruthless power broker without being an astute politician. In September, as O’Rourke was making his case for banning assault weapons, Patrick was making the case for expanded background checks, arguing that if Republicans did nothing they would be massacred themselves — at the polls next fall. He was willing, he said, to “take an arrow” from the National Rifle Association. Naturally, the NRA obliged and stuck him with a quiver full.

Well, that still doesn’t make him wrong. So, here is the glimmer of sunshine in all this gloom, the hope in all these cold and raw lessons 100 days after so many people died. Henry Kissinger once said that globalization is not an act of God; it’s an act of policy. So it is with assault weapons and mass killings. They’re not acts of God, certainly. They are the doing of our government.

O’Rourke and Patrick are equally right. The only way to stop mass shootings is to ban and buy back assault weapons. And the only way to do that is to vote out Republicans and Democrats alike who refuse a ban and buyback. On the eve of 2020, there are too many politicians of both parties who will not honor the dead and wounded of El Paso. Or Odessa, Santa Fe and Sutherland Springs. But we can.

Moreover, we can avenge them at the polls. And as God is our witness, we should.

Parker, author of “Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America,” is a contributing columnist for the Houston Chronicle.

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