They’re not going to get it, just like everyone else who has asked that Greg Abbott Do Something about them.
The Uvalde school board is formally urging Gov. Greg Abbott to call state lawmakers back to Austin so they can raise the legal age to buy assault rifles from 18 to 21, more than two months after a gunman used such a weapon to kill 19 elementary school students and two teachers days after he turned 18.
Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District trustees approved the largely symbolic resolution in a unanimous vote on the same night they voted to delay the start of the school year. Trustees moved the first day of school from Aug. 15 to Sept. 6 so that more security improvements can be made to campuses and district staffers can receive trauma-informed training.
Uvalde County commissioners have also asked Abbott, who in June asked the Texas Legislature to form special committees to make recommendations in the aftermath of the shooting, to call a special session to increase the legal age to buy an assault rifle. Democrats have made similar calls since the May 24 shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary. The governor is the only Texas official with the power to call special legislative sessions.
In an emailed response to The Texas Tribune, a spokesperson from Abbott’s office said the governor “has taken immediate action to address all aspects” of the massacre in Uvalde.
“As Governor Abbott has said from day one, all options remain on the table as he continues working with state and local leaders to prevent future tragedies and deploy all available resources to support the Uvalde community as they heal,” the spokesperson said. “More announcements are expected in the coming days and weeks as the legislature deliberates proposed solutions.”
The vote on both items comes more than a week after a Texas House report detailed a series of “systemic failures” that allowed for the gunman to enter Robb Elementary in Uvalde and remain inside two adjoined classrooms for more than 73 minutes before law enforcement confronted him.
See here for some background. Two things to note here. One is that Abbott’s canned response every time someone asks him to Do Something to prevent teenagers from legally buying high-powered automatic weapons that they use to kill children is basically “I already did, so leave me alone”. He doesn’t want to take action, or to commit to something that might lead to action, so he deflects and hopes no one notices.
Two, the otherwise pretty good House report did not have any specific policy recommendations, such as raising the minimum age for purchasing the aforementioned weapons to 21. One assumes they got some sense of direction if not from Abbott himself then from the official Republican position, which is almost certainly farther to the right than the consensus of the individual members. I mean, I wouldn’t expect there to be anything like a majority within the GOP caucus for raising the age to 21, but I would expect there to be more than enough support when combined with Dems to pass such a bill in the House. I’d also expect that to have at least plurality support among self-identified Republicans, though likely not among Republican primary voters. Which in the end is the group that matters here. The obvious answer, if this is what one wants, is to elect enough Dems to make it happen, at least in the House. I’d still expect it to die in the Senate, but at least we’d have it all on record.
One more thing:
At a school board meeting last week, Uvalde residents called for district officials to fire district police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was among the first officers to arrive at the school the day of the shooting. School board members were scheduled to discuss that Saturday, but the school district postponed the meeting at the request of the police chief’s lawyer.
See here and here for the background. I was hoping to see an update on when this might happen, but not yet. I’ll keep watching.