Why US gun laws get looser after mass shootings

It was the last Friday of the school year and I had been actually subbing  for a teacher for three days. It just seemed like a nice day. On May 18th, 2018, a gunman entered a high school in Santa Fe, Texas and opened fire. I look down and I realize in  my pants I had bloody holes  in my pants and I realized I'm shot. The gunman killed ten people. Flo Rice was shot six times. And then finally, Scot managed  to... he managed to find me. For four years, Flo and Scot have  told their story over and over  to push for new laws that  could prevent mass shootings. It’s made them part of a recurring  conversation on guns in the US. And a cycle the country has  seemed stuck in for decades: a mass shooting, a push for  reform, and then no action. "...the tragic school shooting  in Santa Fe, Texas..." "...this time in El Paso..." "...nine people killed in Dayton..." "...how many years do we have to go through this?" "...Congress is paralyzed..." "...we collectively seem to ask the same question." "What does it take to pass some  gun reform in this country?" But here’s the thing: this cycle of inaction on gun  laws isn’t exactly accurate. Over the past few decades, federal  legislation on guns has been rare. But in state legislatures, mass  shootings have led to new gun laws. Thousands of them. ...and how those laws have  emerged can tell us a lot  about the future of guns in the US. In 2020, a study tried to determine “the  impact of mass shootings on gun policy.” They looked at 25 years of  high profile mass shootings. Then, they looked at gun  legislation passed during that time. Over 3,000 laws across all fifty states. When they took a closer look at  those laws, a pattern emerged  that at first seemed unsurprising. State legislatures controlled by Democrats  were more likely to pass tighter gun laws. Republican-controlled states  typically loosened gun laws. But they found a key difference. Mass shootings didn't have any  statistically significant effect  on the number of laws passed by Democrats. While for Republican legislatures a mass shooting roughly doubles the number of laws  enacted that loosen gun  restrictions in the next year. To arm more teachers, for  example, or arm more school staff. That's James Barragan, a politics  reporter at the Texas Tribune. There is more access to guns afterwards. A state like Texas would go  more towards pro-gun policies  in the aftermath of a gun shooting. Texas has some of the loosest  gun laws in the nation. And that matters — for  people all over the country. People probably don't know about the importance of  state gun laws and really state laws in general. Our gun laws at the federal level have been  frozen in time since basically the 1990s,   which allowed the states to have  a much bigger role and a much   bigger influence in how gun culture  played out in their jurisdictions. Let’s look at Texas. In 1991, a gunman killed 23 people at  a Luby’s restaurant in Killeen, Texas. A woman there named Suzanna Hupp lost  both her parents in the shooting. She believed she could have stopped the massacre and turned her experience into a  crusade for loosening gun laws. "I'm mad at my legislators for  legislating me out of the right  to protect myself and my family." It worked. In 1994, Texas elected a  new governor: George W Bush who made it legal to carry a  concealed gun his first year in office and set off a trend in the state  that's continued for decades. For example in 2012, after  the Sandy Hook elementary   school shooting drew attention  to gun laws across the country Texas responded a few months  later by creating a program   allowing some school employees  to carry guns in school. In 2017, a gunman killed 26 people at  First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs. Within two years, Texas made it legal  to carry weapons in places of worship. But after the Santa Fe High School shooting,  governor Greg Abbott did something unusual. He asked lawmakers to consider a “red flag law” which would allow authorities  to take firearms away  from a person courts deemed dangerous. That is not something that  Republicans in this state often do. Flo and Scot were also pushing for  legislation in response to Santa Fe like laws that would hold  parents accountable if their guns were used by their children to harm people. They also pushed to make it  harder to buy ammunition online. Our shooter, he just checked  the box and said, yes, I'm 18. And they delivered it to his doorstep. You can't get alcohol delivered without  showing proof of I.D. or something. But he ordered ammunition. Their hope for stricter laws was  in line with Texas public opinion. Polling showed only a small minority  of Texans supported loosening gun laws and just over half supported tightening them. We thought it was common  sense that this would be done. They came to Flo's hospital  room the week of the shooting. And we had the governor, lieutenant governor we had congressmen, we had senators, their wives, the chief of staff all in her room at one time, at least 20 people and said, we're going to take care of you. We promise we'll be there for you. We'll fix this. But in the end, these proposals, along with  Abbot’s openness to red flag laws went nowhere. After gun rights supporters went after him. The gun culture is strong. But the gun lobby itself also exerts a  lot of pressure on Texas politicians. There were bills that were put out there,  but they never made it out of committee. Later in 2019 — two shootings in west Texas  just weeks apart prompted Lieutenant Governor   Dan Patrick to suggest another tighter gun  policy — closing background check loopholes. That is a very strong comment  from a lieutenant governor who   is very pro-gun and who is  very friendly with the NRA. But Republican leaders were  saying we may have problems here. Democrats are pushing to take over the  state house for the first time since 2003. After elections were over, with  Republicans still in control in 2021 Texas passed “constitutional carry”: there would no longer be a requirement for Texans to have a license   or receive any training to openly carry handguns. For me, it's very scary because if I see  someone in public with a gun, I will panic. That's going to send me into an anxiety attack. That constitutional carry law that  the state legislature passed in 2021   had been rejected by Republican leaders. But as the Republican Party has gone further and further to the right on issues you get a fringe of the  party that is much more vocal  about all kinds of issues, including gun rights. In recent years, a better  organized gun control movement  has seen more success with  tightening laws in some states. But the movement to expand  gun access isn’t stopping. In 2002 fewer than half of the 50  states had one party in control of   both the state legislature  and the governor’s office. Today, three quarters of the states do. That means, in the places where  Republicans or Democrats have full control they can push through new gun  laws with little chance of a veto. What happens and you see it  in state house to state house is one state passes a law that is very  successful for one side of the aisle. And then another state house  adopts a very, very similar law. Remember that constitutional carry law in Texas? Today, 24 states have similar  laws on the books for that, too. And more than 400 local governments across   20 states have adopted variations on  a “second amendment sanctuary law” meaning a city, town, or  county refuses to recognize  any state or federal gun laws that they believe violate the Second Amendment. These things get replicated. They get  cloned, they go from state to state and they essentially make up this  patchwork of laws throughout the country. In June 2022, in the aftermath  of the Uvalde shooting in Texas President Biden signed the most  significant federal gun bill in 30 years. One thing it does is incentivize  states to pass red flag laws. But it can’t make them do it. That power still belongs to the states. I have survivor's guilt because I'm alive. And so I feel like I have to keep  speaking out. I have to do what I can. There's times when I just think I'm going to stop. I cannot do this for my own mental health. But we just keep, we keep going.

Channel: Vox

Views: 735,616

Keywords: US gun laws, Vox.com, explain, explainer, gun laws, gun violence, vox, voxpowerUSA, gun control, gun control debate, texas gun laws, texas shooter, santa fe tx, uvalde tx, armed shooter, legislation, how does legislation work, gun laws in the US, US gun policy, greg abbott, flo rice, vox ranjani chakraborty, federal laws, state laws, state gun laws, constitutional carry, second amendment, 2nd amendment

Id: BB3qNWRaxGE

Length: 9min 26sec (566 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 28 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I absolutely hate Texas gun culture. I am a native Texan almost 50 years old. I wish I could be proud of how smart Texas is about guns. Instead, this fuckery.