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Amid a series of mass shootings in recent years, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) responded by focusing on promoting mental health services and convening a task force that produced a 40-point plan focused on in “hardening” school campuses and identify threats.
But following the worst school attack in the state’s history, Abbott faces growing criticism that his administration’s response has been inadequate and unable to address the most pressing issue: easy access to weapons, including powerful assault rifles.
The massacre at Robalde Elementary School on Tuesday that left 19 students and two teachers dead was the fourth mass shooting in Texas with 10 or more fatalities since 2017. However, Abbott tried to reassure the public Wednesday that his administration is doing its best. to respond to the crisis, he tried to divert the blame for not doing enough to protect the students.
According to analysts and lawmakers, the 40-point plan, parts of which were approved by the state legislature in 2019, was not widely implemented. A gun rights group praised recent state laws for easing gun restrictions, including a measure passed last year that allows residents to carry guns without a license or training.
At a news conference Wednesday, Abbott sought to minimize the shooter’s relatively easy access to firearms, noting that residents 18 years of age and older have been legally allowed to buy long guns, a category that includes style of weapon used in the shooting of Uvalde, for more than 60 years.
“During that time … we haven’t had episodes like this,” Abbott said. “Why haven’t we had school shootings in most of these 60 years and why do we have them now? I really don’t have the answer to that question. “
Abbott defended his record during an appearance near the shooting site with top Republican aides and lawmakers, who tried to demonstrate a single front in the midst of the commotion investigation. At one point, Abbott was interrupted by Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for governor. He accused the governor of failing to curb armed violence.
“You’re not doing anything!” O’Rourke shouted, before being escorted off the scene by police.
Authorities have identified the gunman Salvador Ronaldo Ramos, 18, who allegedly shot his grandmother before entering Robb Elementary School. Branches had legally bought a pair of semi-automatic rifles recently, they said.
Ramos, who was killed by police at the school, had no criminal record and left no prior notice of the attack, except for a few messages on social media about 30 minutes before he arrived at the scene, they said. the authorities.
Abbott speculated that Ramos was probably suffering from a mental illness, although he said authorities found no history of mental health, and called on political leaders to do more to address mental health.
In response to questions from reporters about his response to past incidents, Abbott reported a 2018 attack on Santa Fe High School in the Houston area, where a 17-year-old student killed eight classmates and two teachers. The governor then convened a working group, consisting of parents, teachers, law enforcement, students and advocacy groups, which drew up the 40-recommendation school safety and firearms plan, to which Abbott commit to dedicate. $ 110 million.
Lawmakers passed several school safety measures the following year that included increasing law enforcement on campus and building more school staff, and trying to prevent threats by identifying potentially dangerous students and connecting them with a school counseling program. telehealth, among other efforts to increase mental health resources. .
“People need to understand that after the Santa Fe shootings, I signed 17 laws to address school safety,” Abbott said.
But Abbott dropped support for a suggestion in the report that lawmakers are considering passing a red-flag law, which would allow police or family members to ask a court to remove a firearm. of someone considered a threat. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (R), an inflexible advocate for gun rights, strongly opposed the move.
Although the telehealth program has expanded to more school districts since 2018, it is not being used in Uvalde, according to the Texas Tech University department that administers it.
“You’ll always have, whatever you do, someone to find another area that’s vulnerable,” Patrick said. “It simply came to our notice then. The governor signed these bills. “
The school’s security plan had “good ideas,” said Nicole Golden, executive director of Texas Gun Sense, the state’s only organization that advocates for the prevention of armed violence. “I was provisional, cautious; I don’t know if I mean hopeful, but curious and open to the initiatives that were proposed.” A red flag law and a requirement to report the loss or theft of weapons, “were sensible measures that most voters here in Texas and across the country would support,” Golden said.
“But those fell short. He didn’t enact these things,” Golden said of Abbott.
In a report last June, Gun Owners of America praised the Texas legislature for passing four bills to strengthen gun rights, including a provision authorizing what gun rights groups call “constitutional carrying.” “: the ability of residents to carry a gun without a license or training. . Another bill repealed the governor’s ability to regulate firearms during a declaration of disaster or state of emergency.
“I think it’s weird to cite legislation from the Santa Fe wake while you’re sitting in Uvalde discussing the massacre of children,” said State Rep. Joe Moody, a Democrat representing El Paso, where a gunman killed 23 people. . at a Walmart in 2019. “The only reason to point out bills like this is that they somehow prevented that from happening. And obviously they didn’t.”
Moody’s said school safety needs to be strengthened in a changing threat environment. But he stressed that simply adding more security guards, cameras or metal detectors is not a reasonable or effective solution. A school security guard was present at the scene of the shooting on Tuesday, authorities said.
“I want my kids to grow up as kids. I don’t want to leave them in a low-security prison every day,” Moody said.
Flo Rice, a substitute teacher who received six shots in the Santa Fe attack, said the comprehensive school safety bill passed by Texas lawmakers seemed “like a monumental change.” She had called for measures to increase security and emergency response in schools, which she said could have helped in Santa Fe, where she had no phone to call 911 or a key to close the gym door where it worked. “It simply came to our notice then. We thought, ‘Wow, something has been achieved!’ ”
But he said it has since been learned that many of these measures “did not have teeth” or enforcement mechanisms to make sure schools put them in place. Rice noted a 2020 report from the Texas State University School Safety Texas Center, which found that only 67 of the 1,022 school districts had a “sufficient” emergency operations plan and 200 had a “sufficient” policy. viable active shooters “.
“It was all pomp and circumstance and the governor patted his back and said,‘ Look what a good job I’ve done, ’Rice said. “And here we are again.”
Rice said she and her fellow advocates also pushed for stricter gun storage laws because the alleged Santa Fe gunman had used his father’s weapons and was stronger. laws to hold parents accountable if they did not keep guns out of the hands of children and these guns were used to harm others.
“None of that happened,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. So we were very disappointed with that. “
The legislature has passed more modest measures to tighten gun laws. In 2019, after the shooting in El Paso and another series of shootings in Odessa and Midland three weeks later that killed seven, Abbott signed a measure that made it a crime to lie in a background check to buy illegally a gun. The state also approved a plan to spend $ 1 million that year on a campaign to promote safe storage of weapons.
Abbott has faced intense pressure from gun advocacy groups, including the National Rifle Association.
On Wednesday, Aidan Johnston, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America, accused gun control advocates, including President Biden, of trying to co-opt the Uvalde shooting into a political agenda. Johnston said his group advocates for allowing teachers to be armed in the classroom.
“Nothing should stand between a teacher who wants to defend children and their right to carry a firearm,” Johnston said. He called Robb Elementary School a “soft target” because, like most Texas schools, it is subject to the federal gun-free zone law.
Zeph Capo, president of the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, said that significant gun control laws “fell into partisan politics within the Republican Party, a party that has chosen to listen to marginal voters for about mothers and fathers, about teachers and children, about others over and over again. Not only have they done nothing, but they have actually made things worse. “