Now, in terms of dealing with the threat, I think they're looking at it in a very mono-focused way, looking at just school security. Dan Patrick actually has some points when he's talking about entrance and exits to schools. It is a big security problem in Texas. But where I think the criticism comes in is that it appears to be all he's saying that we need to do, and that's just incorrect. The gun problem here goes way beyond just school shootings, in a number of mass murder-suicides. We had one earlier last week in Ponder, Texas, near Denton, five people killed in a vicious murder-suicide involving an ex-husband, three young children, his ex-wife and a boyfriend. He then turned the gun on himself. And we were just beginning to try to focus on that, when the shooting in Santa Fe occurred.
AMY GOODMAN: And we're going to talk about the link between mass shootings and violence against women in a moment. But I wanted to turn to the police chief of Houston. Houston is largely a Democratic urban area of Texas versus the more conservative rural and suburban ones. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner responded to Friday's shooting by calling for new gun control measures and metal detectors in schools. The Houston police chief, Art Acevedo, also spoke out against political inaction on gun control.
POLICE CHIEF ART ACEVEDO: We need to start using the ballot box and ballot initiatives to take the matters out of the hands of people that are doing nothing, that are elected, into the hands of the people, to see that the will of the people in this country is actually carried out. ... And this one specifically, one of the things that we need to consider is, if you have firearms in your home and you do not secure them and you don't secure them in a manner that can preclude someone from grabbing them and taking them and carrying out this carnage, that there is a criminal liability that it attaches.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that's the Houston police chief, Art Acevedo. Ed Scruggs of Texas Gun Sense, can you talk about the legislation you're supporting in Texas and what kind of opposition you face? And will -- do you think that will change after this?
ED SCRUGGS: Well, I do want to quickly mention Art Acevedo. He used to be the chief of police here in Austin, where I live. I count him as a friend, a very brave spokesman. And I think what you hear coming out of Houston from the mayor and the police chief, it illustrates a cultural divide that is growing in Texas between urban areas and rural areas. And you see it on display right there: Art Acevedo, somewhat blunt, but very to the point and matter-of-fact about, "Hey, this is what we need to do." So I think that that will have an impact in coming years.
But in terms of legislation, our organization has been just working to get into the doors of lawmakers the last four to six years. And we're realistic about what we face here, but there are some areas of common ground that we should be able to reach, if we could sit down today. And those would be improving safe storage, gun safety education -- which was a factor in this event, no question about that -- also improving background checks, red flag laws -- similar to what was passed in Florida after Parkland -- and also doing more to streamline laws regarding the confiscation of weapons and taking them from the hands of abusive spouses.
The law here is very, very vague. We have received bipartisan support in private conversations on those issues. We just have an intractable, entrenched political system in our Legislature. It was mentioned earlier, our electoral system here, the majority-Republican control and gerrymandering of districts, etc. The NRA is extremely powerful in the Legislature. They don't spend a lot of money, because they don't have to, because, really, they're playing on the NRA's playing field in many ways. And so, lawmakers are basically terrified of being primaried. And so it is hard to get any gun legislation, no matter how commonsense it may be or how good of an idea it is, to actually get it moving.
But what we're hopeful of is that as these terrible incidents continue -- and they will continue -- that eventually the pressure is going to mount, and we will see some movement. I think public opinion -- we have seen some movement here in Texas. A Quinnipiac poll about three weeks ago, Texas-specific poll, showed that 55 percent of Texans supported stricter gun laws. And that was a 14-point margin over those who did not. A majority of Texans favored a federal ban on assault-style weapons. We haven't seen that before. And 94 percent of Texans favored background checks for all gun buyers. This puts us in the league with a lot -- most other states. It shows that the events, I think, of recent months have had an impact on public opinion. And something tells me somewhere that Greg Abbott may have seen that poll. But it's not just public opinion in the state. It's who votes in the state and where they vote. And that makes it much more complicated than it might be in some other states.
AMY GOODMAN: Kolten Parker of The Texas Observer, you wrote a piece after the NRA convention about Governor Greg Abbott there at the convention saying, "The problem is not guns, it's hearts without God." And you also have been closely following Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor, who blamed abortion and other issues for this massacre. Can you talk about his power and his power base within the Legislature? He could be Texas's next governor, is that right?
KOLTEN PARKER: Sure. I mean, I think if you ask him, he would say that he's focused on being the lieutenant governor. He's said as much in the past. But where he sits, he controls -- basically, he's the president of the Senate. And, you know, the way that Texas' government is set up, in some ways, he's as powerful, if not more, than the governor at times. And he's also, you know, very skillful at politics. He comes from Houston. He was a shock jock, a conservative radio host, before he got into politics. He came into the Senate as somebody who was making a lot of noise as a freshman, causing a lot of hype around himself. And as soon as he became lieutenant governor, things began to change --
AMY GOODMAN: He got a -- Kolten, he got a vasectomy on the air?
KOLTEN PARKER: Yeah, he got a vasectomy on the air, which is sort of one thing that gets mentioned in stories now. There's a lot of other things that he did to sort of -- I mean, it was something that he was -- you know, in an objective way, he's a skillful speaker and politician. And so, things like that lead into his tenure as lieutenant governor.
He changed rules in the Senate that had long been traditional to keep sort of the balance of power between the majority party and the minority party. Last session, he was extremely vocal on the bathroom bill, which was an anti-trans measure that took up much of the oxygen of the Legislature. You know, there wasn't much time for guns last session, if there was any appetite anyways, because most of the session was spent talking about the bathroom bill.
In Texas, we have a part-time Legislature. They meet for about six months every other year. The next time that they will meet is -- begins this coming January. And I think we'll see a lot of this discussion now and, you know, theoretically, the discussion that will happen at these roundtables that Governor Abbott has called for this week. I think, you know, it's a long time before the session starts. So, depending on what happens from now until then, if more shootings occur, and what happens in the midterm general election this November, I think, will determine how much of an appetite there is at the Capitol. But I think one thing that you already see playing out is that Dan Patrick is going to take the far-right side of things like usual. It sounds like he's in agreeance with the incoming NRA president that this is not a gun issue, that this is a culture issue. Abortion is, you know, largely inaccessible in Texas now, so it's sort of interesting to hear Patrick blame violence in Texas on something that they've been so adamant about getting rid of in the state. But again, I think --
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we're going to break and then come back to this discussion, and we're going to start off our next segment by talking about Sabika Aziz Sheikh. She is the Pakistani high school exchange student who died in the killing on Friday. Hers was the first funeral yesterday. Her family from Pakistan couldn't come. They will hold a funeral in Pakistan. We've been speaking with Ed Scruggs of Texas Gun Sense and Kolten Parker of The Texas Observer, who's covered the gun issue and many other issues in Texas for years. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "The Times They Are a-Changin'" performed by Jennifer Hudson at the March for Our Lives against gun violence in Washington, D.C., earlier this year.
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