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I was in the room where Texas gun reform didn't happen
I was at the table when Gov. Greg Abbott seemed serious about gun reform
Ed Scruggs
As the blanket media coverage of the massacre in Uvalde stretched into the late evening hours Wednesday, the anger which many times fueled my resolve to speak out and organize began to slip away. A sense of despair took hold. So many unthinkable acts of mass violence (Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe, El Paso) only to find ourselves right back where many of us started this fight a decade earlier. As bleak as the situation may well be, the people of Texas deserve to know there were brief but pivotal moments when the possibility of progress was laid out on a table surprisingly set by Gov. Greg Abbott.
In the days after the 2018 mass shooting at Santa Fe High School, which followed on the heels of the murders at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the resulting March for Our Lives movement, Abbott convened the first of his closed door “roundtable” discussions on gun violence. My advocacy organization at the time, Texas Gun Sense, was invited to attend. In a room filled with our state’s top elected officials, law enforcement, educators and mental health professionals, the governor sought input on a variety of small but meaningful reform proposals. These included establishing a red flag law, increasing the penalty for failing to secure a firearm, and mandatory reporting of stolen firearms — modest but groundbreaking for a Texas Republican. His knowledge of these policy areas was impressive and his interest appeared genuine. So what happened? Why didn’t any of these ideas get signed into law?
-- snip --
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick would later destroy the notion of crafting a Texas red flag law, announcing it dead on arrival in the Senate. Abbott said nothing. He inexplicably remained silent during the session as his modest gun security and theft reporting reforms were killed in committee. This end result was a stark contrast from Florida, where a Republican-dominated Legislature passed a red flag law just three weeks after the shooting at Majory Stoneman Douglas High School.
-- snip --
In recent days it has become difficult to shake the notion that I was a naive but willing prop in a sideshow meant to distract. I can’t help but believe most rational folks are currently revisiting their words and actions in that room. Valuable time and energy were wasted trying to persuade elected officials who don’t even control their own agendas.
Ed Scruggs
As the blanket media coverage of the massacre in Uvalde stretched into the late evening hours Wednesday, the anger which many times fueled my resolve to speak out and organize began to slip away. A sense of despair took hold. So many unthinkable acts of mass violence (Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe, El Paso) only to find ourselves right back where many of us started this fight a decade earlier. As bleak as the situation may well be, the people of Texas deserve to know there were brief but pivotal moments when the possibility of progress was laid out on a table surprisingly set by Gov. Greg Abbott.
In the days after the 2018 mass shooting at Santa Fe High School, which followed on the heels of the murders at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the resulting March for Our Lives movement, Abbott convened the first of his closed door “roundtable” discussions on gun violence. My advocacy organization at the time, Texas Gun Sense, was invited to attend. In a room filled with our state’s top elected officials, law enforcement, educators and mental health professionals, the governor sought input on a variety of small but meaningful reform proposals. These included establishing a red flag law, increasing the penalty for failing to secure a firearm, and mandatory reporting of stolen firearms — modest but groundbreaking for a Texas Republican. His knowledge of these policy areas was impressive and his interest appeared genuine. So what happened? Why didn’t any of these ideas get signed into law?
-- snip --
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick would later destroy the notion of crafting a Texas red flag law, announcing it dead on arrival in the Senate. Abbott said nothing. He inexplicably remained silent during the session as his modest gun security and theft reporting reforms were killed in committee. This end result was a stark contrast from Florida, where a Republican-dominated Legislature passed a red flag law just three weeks after the shooting at Majory Stoneman Douglas High School.
-- snip --
In recent days it has become difficult to shake the notion that I was a naive but willing prop in a sideshow meant to distract. I can’t help but believe most rational folks are currently revisiting their words and actions in that room. Valuable time and energy were wasted trying to persuade elected officials who don’t even control their own agendas.
From: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Opinion-I-was-at-the-table-when-Abbott-seemed-17205435.php
Or: https://tinyurl.com/3ka4mnsj (no paywall)