Over half of Texans polled wanted stricter gun laws before the Santa Fe shooting

[struggle4progress]

BY ALEX SAMUELS
MAY 21, 2018
3 HOURS AGO

... “Republicans and Democrats tend to look at the same tragedy from very different perspectives,” Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist, said Monday. “Democrats look at Santa Fe and their most popular answer tends to be that gun control is the correct response to keep this from happening in the future. Whereas Republicans don’t see it that way. They don’t believe gun control would have any impact or is even germane.”

Texans are also split on who, or what, to blame for mass shootings. Of those surveyed, most (24 percent) said the primary cause is a failure of the mental health system, which was closely followed by current gun laws. Thirteen percent of respondents focused much of their ire on extreme views on the internet, while 10 percent blamed various forms of media (e.g., “media attention given to perpetrators of mass shootings”).

Increased access to mental health services seems to be one solution both Republicans and Democrats turn to in the wake of such tragedies. After Friday’s shooting, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott touted a four-year-old project run by the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center as a potential statewide model to reduce gun violence. The program works to identify junior high and high school students most at risk for committing violence in schools and intervene before it happens.

Another thing Texans seem to agree on? Overall, more than half of registered voters surveyed said gun control laws should be stricter. Only 13 percent of surveyed Texans said existing laws should be less strict than they are now, and 31 percent would prefer to leave current gun laws unchanged ...

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/05/21/most-texas-want-stricter-gun-laws-santa-fe-school-shooting/

[struggle4progress]

1. Anti-Gun Backlash From School Shooting? Probably Not in Texas

By Manny Fernandez, Jack Healy and Dave Montgomery
May 20, 2018

SANTA FE, Tex. — One mile from the scene of the shooting that left 10 people dead at her school, Monica Bracknell, a senior at Santa Fe High School, approached Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in the lobby of Arcadia First Baptist Church here Sunday morning.

Her message was simple: The violence was not “a political issue,” she told Mr. Abbott, explaining to reporters afterward that schools needed to be safer but restricting the availability of guns was not the way to achieve it ...

While some students from Parkland had angrily confronted their pro-gun elected representatives after their school was shot up, Ms. Williams quietly told a nodding Mr. Cruz that she wanted her teachers to be armed. It was a refrain in the candlelit park that night: Stricter gun control laws would not have prevented the shooting, several students said. But they believed that arming qualified teachers could have ...

The gun debate here touches on one of the central divides that shapes politics in Texas: the largely Democratic urban areas versus more conservative rural and suburban ones. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, for example, has bitterly denounced inaction on gun issues, and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner called on Sunday for new gun control measures and metal detectors in schools ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/20/us/texas-school-shooting-guns.html

[treestar]

2. In Texas? That's good news.

Seems like it is worth a try. If Rs were right and it would make no difference, that would show.

[struggle4progress]

3. Texas lieutenant governor blames abortions, violent video games, entrances

By Darran Simon, CNN
Updated 10:24 PM ET, Sun May 20, 2018

... "The video games issue, we have got to address in this country. Based on all the research we have done, 97%, according to psychologists and psychiatrists ... of teenagers view video games, and 85% of those video games are violent. ... And what are these games showing you how to do? Kill people. ... The vast majority [of psychologists and psychiatrists] will tell you it leads them to become numb to violence, to have less empathy to their victims and be more aggressive. Does that impact everyone who views them? No, but it obviously is part of the problem" ...

"We have 50 million abortions. We have families that are broken apart, no fathers at home. We have incredible heinous violence as a [video] game, two hours a day in front of their eyes. And we stand here and we wonder why this happens to certain students"
...

Speaking Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," Patrick repeated earlier arguments about eliminating some school entrances: "We need to get down to one or two entrances into our schools." He added: "You have the necessary exits for fire, of course, but we have to funnel our students into our schools so we can put eyes on them" ...

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/20/us/texas-lieutenant-governor-dan-patrick-reasons-for-school-shootings/index.html

[struggle4progress]

4. Ollie North blames Ritalin and movies

Marisa Schultz

... “If you look at what’s happened to the young people, many of these young boys have been on Ritalin since they were in kindergarten,” he claimed.

There is no evidence to date to suggest that Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the teen who gunned down 10 people at Santa Fe High School in Texas on Friday, was on any ADHD medicine ...

Mr North also argued that the shooting may not have happened had the school taken part in the NRA’s School Shield safety program, which helps schools ​assess ways to “harden,” or beef-up the security at, campus entrances, including through the use of metal detectors ...

Santa Fe High School had two armed police officers and an active-shooter defence plan and had won a statewide award for its safety program ...

http://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/the-head-of-americas-nra-has-a-bizarre-theory-on-why-school-shootings-happen/news-story/8b7e7b6cb46caae14381123c7a1010b3

[struggle4progress]

5. Texas governor cancels shotgun giveaway

BY ARIS FOLLEY - 05/21/18 02:54 PM EDT

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Monday canceled plans for his reelection campaign to give away a shotgun days after a mass shooting at a high school in the state left 10 people dead.

A spokesperson for Abbott on Monday told Politico the contest is still active but the winner will receive a $250 gift card instead of the shotgun, as previously advertised.

The contest webpage has been changed, with photos featuring Abbot holding a shotgun taken down and an advertisement of a gift card now displayed ...

http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/388646-texas-governor-cancels-plans-of-shotgun-giveaway-days-after-school

[Kirk Lover]

6. I saw quite a few of those Santa Fe kids saying gun control is not the answer. Sad to hear that in

their mind it's not even PART of an answer....? But I'll believe Texas wants stricter gun laws when they vote that way...I mean they keep voting in Ted Cruz for fucks sake.

[argyl]

10. Cruz has been elected once. For his re-election bid this November Beto O'Rourke May win.

And we'll set Cruz on the curb to be hauled off with the rest of the trash.

[Kirk Lover]

11. So it just feels as if he's been around forever. !! nt

[argyl]

12. Sometimes it feels like he's "Been around for a long, long year"

He still has a slight edge over Beto but it's a way until November.

Texas demographics are rapidly changing and when we Texas Dems start winning state elections, and go blue in Presidential campaigns, it's game over for the Repubs.

[struggle4progress]

7. Gun rights not at risk in wake of school shooting, Texas governor says

Thomson Reuters
Posted: May 21, 2018 1:31 PM ET
Last Updated: 4 hours ago

... Abbott, a Republican and staunch supporter of gun rights, said he would talk with educators, parents and elected officials about ways to improve school security without infringing on the right to bear arms, which advocates say is protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution ...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/greg-abbott-texas-sante-fe-shooting-1.4672007

[struggle4progress]

8. The NRA's culture of convenient excuses

Rex Huppke

... Violent video games are available everywhere, but America’s gun violence rate is staggeringly higher than those other top video-game-purchasing countries ...

Our level of religiosity is high compared with those countries, but our gun violence problem is off the charts.

Abortion? According to data from a study released this year by the Guttmacher Institute, the number of abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 49 in the United States was 13. The rate was the same in the United Kingdom. Sweden had a higher abortion rate at 18 per 1,000 women, but there were only 41 people shot to death there last year ...

Ritalin? That’s also not unique to America. Iceland, which is virtually gun-violence-free, saw its use of the drug commonly used to treat ADHD jump more than 230 percent between 2004 and 2014. Furthermore, there hasn’t been any indication the Santa Fe shooter was taking Ritalin, and a 2000 report on school shootings conducted in part by the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center and the Department of Education found: “Few of the attackers had been diagnosed with any mental disorder prior to the incident. Additionally, fewer than one-third of attackers had histories of drug or alcohol abuse” ...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-met-santa-fe-shooting-nra-huppke-20180521-story.html

[gratuitous]

9. Dammit!

It's a shame we can only push for stricter gun regulation when and only when 100% of the citizens approve of it.

Well, you can't say we didn't try. Too bad. Too late. Or too early, maybe. Anyway, it's obviously and definitely not the right time for this discussion. Too emotional. Not enough facts. Too many facts, who can sort through it all? Have we really given it a chance, this not-doing-anything plan? Perhaps another round of thoughtsandprayers?