AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – The first public hearings in Texas to address the Uwalde school massacre focused on a cascade of law enforcement mistakes, school building safety and mental health care with only a faint mention of the semi-style AR-15 of the shooter. reform of automatic rifles and weapons.
A day after the Texas state chief called the law enforcement response to the May 24 massacre a “serious failure,” Texas senators on Wednesday turned their attention to funding mental health for schools and a shortage of mental health counselors and providers.
It wasn’t until the end of Wednesday’s hearing in the Texas Capitol that there was much talk of gun laws. And even then he received little recognition.
No civil servants or families from Uwalde testified during the two days of the hearings.
The confused reaction to the attack, which left 19 children and two teachers dead before police killed a shooter at Rob’s primary school, enraged the nation, and a recent wave of deadly mass shootings has renewed calls for more gun laws. By the end of the week, the US Senate may pass new legislation that will increase inspections for the youngest buyers of firearms and require more vendors to conduct inspections.
But the Republican-dominated commission investigating the Uwalde tragedy seems to have little appetite for new gun laws, even after a series of mass shootings in Texas that have killed more than 85 people in the past five years at a church in El Paso Walmart. Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe High School outside of Houston and the oil country in West Texas.
The Republican-controlled state legislature has spent the last decade lifting restrictions. Texas does not require a permit to carry a long rifle like the one used in Uwalde. Last year, lawmakers made it legal for anyone aged 21 and over to carry a gun in public without a license, inspection or training.
Nicole Golden, executive director of Texas Gun Sense, told the committee that tighter gun control may have prevented past mass shootings in Texas, and called on state lawmakers to consider the so-called “red flag” law and demand personal checks. sales of firearms.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in the last month in terms of outrage, despair and a broken heart,” Golden said. “Texas is facing a crisis that we know we have been facing for a long time.
She received no questions from Republican lawmakers in the panel.
Outside the Senate, nearly two dozen members of the Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America held placards criticizing Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and calling on lawmakers to impose new restrictions on gun sales and ownership.
“We’re tired of these idle commissions and roundtables that happen after every mass shooting in Texas,” said Melanie Green of Austin. “They talk about what went wrong and it’s usually everything but weapons. We are tired of all the talk and we want a little action. “
Among the changes the group wants is to raise the age of possession of a weapon from 18 to 21. The gunman at Rob’s primary school was a former student, Salvador Ramos, who bought the weapon used in the attack shortly after his 18th birthday.
Green was not optimistic. “This committee is an exhibition of dogs and ponies. This is a performative political theater. But we will not give up, “Green said.
Republican Sen. Bob Hall tried to stay away from all sorts of gun talks.
“You don’t need a gun. This man had plenty of time to do it with his hands or a baseball bat. So it’s not the gun, it’s the man, “Hall said Tuesday as the hearings began in Austin, 160 miles (260 kilometers) from Uwalde.
Sen. Royce West, a Democrat on the Senate committee, said that “without discussing these rights and the restrictions associated with them, this would be an incomplete discussion.”
However, delays and errors in law enforcement response at Rob Elementary School are at the heart of federal, state and local investigations.
Steve McCrow, Texas’s director of public safety, said Tuesday that police had enough staff and firepower at the school to stop Ramos three minutes after he entered the building, but instead waited more than an hour before to break into the classroom and kill him.
McCraw outlined a series of missed opportunities, communication failures and errors based on an investigation that included approximately 700 interviews. He also blamed Pete Aredondo, the Uwalde school police chief, whom McCrow said was the commander.
Aredondo, who testified Tuesday at a closed-door hearing at the Texas House Commission, said he did not consider himself responsible and suggested someone else had taken control. He rejected repeated requests for comment from the Associated Press.
The mayor of Uwalde denied McCrow’s guilt over Aredondo, saying the Ministry of Public Security had repeatedly leaked false information about the shooting and concealed the role of its own officials.
On Wednesday, the head of Uwalde’s independent school district, Hal Harel, said he had left Aredondo on administrative leave because the facts remained unclear. In a statement, Harel did not elaborate on Aredondo’s actions as commander on the ground during the attack, but said he did not know when details of numerous investigations into the law enforcement response to the killings would be revealed.
Public pressure has intensified for state and local officials to release more information.
Also Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Roland Gutierrez, representing Uwalde, filed a lawsuit to force the Texas Department of Public Safety to hand over records related to the shooting investigation. The families of the victims “deserve to know the full, unchanging truth about what happened that day,” the Democrat’s lawyer wrote in the case.
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Bleiberg reported from Dallas. Associated Press writer John Sewer of Toledo, Ohio, contributed to the report.
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