Placeholder while loading article actions
UVALDE, Tex. – For years, even as mass shootings swept the country, Richard Small sank into any talk of stricter gun restrictions, seeing it as more than a political gesture that would not do much to stop the violence while violating his rights as a gun owner.
But then the 68-year-old retired high school history teacher saw last Tuesday a photo of one of the young victims of the shooting at Robb d’Uvalde Elementary School, a nice little town he had often visited while coaching football. juvenile.
“He looked like my grandson. I mean, they could have been twins. They have the same face,” Small said, his voice trembling with emotion. “It just caused me something.”
After the massacre, Small and his wife, Marina, drove nearly 90 minutes from their ranch to Charlotte, a small town south of San Antonio, to pay their respects to Uvalde. It was located on the edge of the town square where there were 21 crosses, for the 19 fourth graders. and two teachers killed in the shooting, have become here the epicenter of anguish. Somehow, the tears didn’t feel enough.
Families of Columbine, Sandy Hook and Parkland victims spoke to The Post about their shared pain, trauma and hope for action after the Texas school shooting. (Video: Joshua Carroll, Joy Yi, Leila Barghouty / The Washington Post, Photo: Eric Gay / AP / The Washington Post)
On Saturday night, Small, a self – proclaimed “NRA devotee Republican “, he did what he admits would have been unthinkable days before. He unlocked his weapons cabinet and pulled out his AR-15, similar to the one the gunman used in Uvalde. He drove to his local police department and handed him over.
“I’m an advocate for guns. I believe in the Second Amendment. But this AR, after what I saw in Uvalde, I’ve already finished it,” Small said as he handed the rifle to a Charlotte police officer. “I’m sick of it.”
Weapons have long been an inextricable part of Texas culture, closely intertwined in small towns like Uvalde, a predominantly Latino community of about 16,000 people an hour north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Here, children are raised to hunt and shoot from an early age, and many residents, including relatives of the victims, say they have weapons to protect themselves. It is an affinity that transcends partisan lines that normally define the arms debate in other parts of the country.
But now, as in other communities that have been shattered by armed violence, Uvalde faces painful questions beyond disaffection with the dead and growing anger over the police response, questions about gun proliferation and laws. permissive state that allowed 18-year-olds. -old gunman to legally buy the assault rifle used in the attack.
This ongoing debate has even affected some of the families of the victims. Outside a memorial service Saturday at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, where many of the funerals are scheduled to take place in the coming days, a woman whose niece died in the attack asked how she could having bought a gunman who was not old enough to buy beer in Texas. two semi-automatic rifles and a massive amount of ammunition without any concern.
He spoke on condition of anonymity out of respect for his family, who had asked relatives not to talk about “political issues” in the media. “Why do you even need weapons like this?” the woman asked. But he said other members of his family disagreed with his position, even after last week’s massacre.
Felix and Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter Lexi was killed in the attack, called for more restrictive gun laws, including a ban on the AR-15 rifles, even when Felix, an assistant in the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office, told ABC News that his position would likely put him at odds with his police colleagues.
But others were skeptical that what happened in Uvalde would turn into a gun fight. While sitting at the memorial for the victims last week, Amanda Flores said she knew the 21 victims of the crash, but she still doesn’t believe the tragedy should turn into a gun ownership debate. Flores, 43, said she and her family members own firearms and see them as essential tools for keeping her family safe in “a border town.”
“With all the problems we have now with the immigrants who believe, you don’t know how many high-speed chases pass through here, we need them for our protection,” said Flores, whose grandson was at Robb Elementary when he left. he started shooting but escaped unharmed. “They are all entering, they are entering as illegal, they can have weapons. And what are we supposed to do? Throwing stones at them? “
Still, Flores said he believes even the most demanding gun owners should be willing to accept new gun control measures. “I don’t think kids have easy access to these weapons and aren’t mentally stable,” Flores said. This sentiment has not been shared by Texas leaders. At a news conference in Uvalde on Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (right) dismissed the idea of extended background check for the purchase of firearms.
“Look at what happened in the Santa Fe shooting,” Abbott said, referring to an attack on a high school in South Houston in 2018 in which eight students and two teachers. they were killed. “A background check was irrelevant because the killer took his parents’ weapon. Look at what happened in the shooting in Sutherland Springs. A background check was done. defective way that allowed the killer to get a gun. “
Abbott also reiterated his opposition to proposals to raise the legal age for buying a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21, recalling a time before the arrival of rapid-fire weapons. “Since Texas is a state, an 18-year-old has had the ability to buy a long pistol, a rifle, and since then it seemed like we’ve only had one for the last decade or two. School shootings,” he said. dir Abbott. “So for a century and a half, 18-year-olds were able to buy rifles and we didn’t have shootings at school, but now we do.”
Reiterating the comments he made after those previous shootings, Abbott suggested focusing on mental health services. “Maybe we’re focusing on the wrong thing,” Abbott said, referring to the arms control debate. In a video played that day at the NRA convention in Houston, he sharply rejected calls for new gun laws, saying that those in other places “have not prevented the insane from committing evil deeds.”
His comments on Uvalde provoked the indignation of state Senator Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district extends from San Antonio to Uvalde. Gutierrez stood up and began calling on the governor, urging him to convene a special session to address armed violence.
Gutierrez later mocked Abbott’s suggestion that firearms today are comparable to the weapons that were in circulation when Texas became a state in 1845. “This is no longer the time we are killing squirrels. Times and technology have changed. These kids are buying AR-15s, “Gutierrez said. “If you want to show any strength, change your age to 21 or 24.”
Outside of Robb Elementary, where he was trying to see President Biden on Sunday, Edgar Sanchez said his daughter was a fourth-grader at the school, but that she left early that day, a decision that could have saved her. life but that has left her traumatized. . Sanchez said he expects Biden to push for tougher gun control measures, even if that means giving up his own AR-15.
“Honestly, I have one,” Sanchez said, explaining that he had bought the gun to protect himself and his family. “If they told me the kids would be safer if I got rid of them, I would.” He added: “I’ve never fired this assault rifle.”
In a town that many residents have described as “heavily armed” and in a state where it is common to see openly carried weapons, it seems that many had left their weapons at home in recent days, visiting unimproved monuments and attending unofficial trades. church that have appeared around the city to honor the dead. It was in stark contrast to the aftermath of the 2017 attack on Sutherland Springs, when men carrying rifles took to the scene to suppress the conversation over gun control measures.
Outside Oasis Outback, the sporting goods store where law enforcement officials say the alleged gunman bought his weapons, customers heading to a crowded parking lot on Saturday were reluctant to talk. of what had happened in Uvalde and of the arms control debate. “We shouldn’t be talking about politics at a time like this,” one woman said as she greeted a reporter.
A week ago, Richard Small admits, he would have said the same thing. A lifelong member of the NRA who has been collecting guns since he was 20, Small said he has always been a strong advocate for gun rights and still is. But the shooting in Uvalde affected him in a way that other school massacres like Columbine and Sandy Hook had not done, even though he was still teaching when those shootings happened.
“I felt detached from that. It looked like they were on the planet Mars,” Small said. “It won’t happen here. It won’t happen here. And then it did.”
While visiting the memorials in Uvalde, Small said, he he thought of his weapons in his closet and one of his weapons. Small said he bought the rifle at least 15 years ago but had barely fired it. “I don’t even think I used a box full of ammo with it,” Small said. On the back of his pistol, he recalled, was a tag. “Only for law enforcement,” he said.
Small recalled how, under the strictest gun ownership rules of the past, he had it to fill out great documentation to buy the gun and go through checks “much more than this 18-year-old boy did.” Even now, Small said, he would never support a gun ban, as he fears some Democrats might want to. But he said Republicans like Abbott …