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WWALDE, Texas – For years, even as mass shootings engulfed the country, Richard Small shuddered at any talk of tougher gun restrictions, seeing it as nothing more than a politically motivated pointing finger stopping the violence while violating his rights as a gun owner.
But then the 68-year-old retired high school history teacher saw a photo of one of the young victims of last Tuesday’s shooting at Rob’s primary school in Uwalde, a pleasant little town he often visited when he coached youth football.
“He looked like my grandson. I mean, they could have been twins. They have the same face, ”Small said, his voice trembling with emotion. “It just stirred something in me.”
After the massacre, Small and his wife, Marina, drove nearly 90 minutes from their ranch in Charlotte, a small town south of San Antonio, to pay their respects in Uwalde. He stood on the edge of the town square, where they cross 21, for the 19 fourth-graders and two teachers killed in the shooting have become the epicenter of grief here. Somehow the tears were not enough.
The families of the Columbine victims, Sandy Hook and Parkland, told The Post about their shared grief, trauma and hope for action after the shooting at a school in Texas. (Video: Joshua Carroll, Joy Yi, Leila Barghouty / The Washington Post, Photo: Eric Gay / AP / The Washington Post)
On Saturday night, a small, self-determined pious NRA A Republican, ”he did what he admits would have been unthinkable days earlier. He unlocked his weapon cabinet and pulled out his AR-15, similar to the one used by the shooter in Uwalde. He went to the local police station and handed him over.
“I am a defender of weapons. I believe in the second amendment. But this AR, after what I saw in Uwalde, I’m done with it, “Small said as he handed the rifle to a Charlotte police officer. “I’m sick of it.”
Weapons have long been an integral part of Texas culture, closely intertwined in small towns like Uwalde, a predominantly Latin American community of about 16,000 about an hour north of the U.S. border with Mexico. Here, children are raised to hunt and shoot by small and many residents, including members of the victims’ families, who say they have weapons to defend themselves. This is an affinity that crosses the guerrilla lines that usually determine the debate on weapons in other parts of the country.
But now, as in other communities ravaged by gun violence, Uwalde faces painful questions beyond breaking the hearts of the dead and growing anger over police response, gun proliferation issues and state permitting laws that allow The 18-year-old – an armed man to legally buy an assault rifle used in the attack.
This unfolding debate has even affected some of the victims’ families. Outside of a memorial service Saturday at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, where many funerals are scheduled to take place in the coming days, a woman whose niece was killed in the attack asked how he could buy a shooter who is not yet old enough to to buy beer in Texas two semi-automatic rifles and a huge amount of ammunition without causing concern.
She spoke on condition of anonymity out of respect for her family, who asked her relatives not to talk about “political issues” in front of the media. “Why do you need such weapons at all?” The woman asked. But, she said, others in her family disagreed, even after last week’s massacre.
Felix and Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter Lexi was killed in the attack, have called for more restrictive gun laws, including a ban on AR-15 rifles, even when Felix, a deputy from the Uwalde County Sheriff’s Office, told ABC News that his position was likely to put him at odds with his law enforcement counterparts.
However, others feared to see what happened in Uwalde turn into a battle for arms. As she sat at the memorial to the victims last week, Amanda Flores said she knew all 21 victims of the riot, but still did not believe the tragedy should turn into a debate over gun ownership. Flores, 43, said she and her family owned firearms and saw them as key tools to keep their families safe in the “border town.”
“With all the problems we have right now with immigrants passing through, you don’t know how fast the persecution is going on here, we need it for our protection,” said Flores, whose grandson was at Rob’s primary school when the shooting started but escaped unscathed. “They all come in, they come in illegally, they can have weapons. And what should we do? Throw stones at them? “
However, Flores said he increasingly believes that even solid gun owners should be prepared to adopt some new weapons control measures. “I don’t believe in young children who have easy access to these weapons and are not mentally stable,” Flores said. This view is not shared by Texas leaders. At a news conference in Uwalde on Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (right) rejected the idea of extended background checks on firearms purchases.
“Look at what happened in the Santa Fe shooting,” Abbott said, referring to an attack on a high school south of Houston in 2018 that killed eight students and two teachers. were killed. “The check didn’t matter because the killer took the gun from his parents. See what happened in the Sutherland Springs shooting. A background check was performed. This was done in the wrong way, which allowed the killer to get a weapon.
Abbott also reiterated his opposition to proposals to raise the legal age for buying a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21, citing the time before the advent of rapid-fire weapons. “Since Texas was a state, an 18-year-old has had the ability to buy a long pistol, a rifle, and since then we seem to have only had one in the last decade or two. school shootings, “said Abbott. “So, for a century and a half, 18-year-olds could buy rifles and we didn’t have school shootings, but now we do.
Echoing the comments he made after these earlier shootings, Abbott suggested focusing instead on mental health services. “Maybe we’re focusing on the wrong thing,” Abbott said, referring to the arms control debate. In a video released that day at the NRA Congress in Houston, he strongly rejected calls for new gun laws, saying existing ones “have not stopped madmen from doing evil.”
His comments in Uwalde sparked outrage from US Senator Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district stretches from San Antonio to Uwalde. Gutierrez stood up and started shouting at the governor, calling on him to convene a special session to tackle gun violence.
Gutierrez later scoffed at Abbott’s suggestion that firearms today were comparable to those in circulation when Texas became a state in 1845. “This is no longer the time to kill squirrels. Times and technologies have changed. “These kids are buying AR-15,” Gutierrez said. “If he wanted to show some strength of spirit, change the age to 21 or 24.”
Outside of Rob Elementary School, where he was trying to catch a glimpse of President Biden on Sunday, Edgar Sanchez said his daughter was a fourth-grader at school but left early that day, a decision that could have saved her life but left her traumatized. . Sanchez said he hoped Biden would push for tighter gun control measures, even if it meant giving up his own AR-15.
“Honestly, I have one,” Sanchez said, explaining that he bought the weapon to keep himself and his family safe. “If they tell me that children will be safer if he gets rid of it, I will. He added: “I have never fired this assault rifle.”
In a city described by many as “heavily armed” and in a state where it is common to see openly carried weapons, many seem to have left their weapons at home in recent days, visiting unarmed makeshift memorials and attending church services that have emerged. around the city to honor the dead. This was in contrast to the aftermath of the 2017 Sutherland Springs attack, when men with rifles appeared on the scene to repel talks on gun control measures.
Outside of Oasis Outback, a sporting goods store where law enforcement officials say the alleged gunman bought his weapons, customers who make their way through a full parking lot on Saturday are reluctant to talk about what happened in Uwalde and the debate. for arms control. “We don’t need to talk about politics at a time like this,” one woman said as she waved to a reporter.
A week ago, Richard Small admitted that he would say the same. Almost a lifelong member of the NRA who has been collecting weapons since he was 20, Small said he has always been a strong supporter of gun rights and still is. But the shooting in Uwalde affected him in a way that other schools massacres like Columbine and Sandy Hook, although he was still teaching when the shootings took place.
“I felt dissociated from that. “They seemed to be on the planet Mars,” Small said. “This is not going to happen here. It will not happen here. And then it happened. “
While visiting the Uwalde memorials, Small said he he thought of his weapon cabinet at home and one of the weapons in it. Small said he bought the rifle at least 15 years ago, but hardly fired it. “I don’t even think I used a full box of ammunition with it,” Small said. He remembered that there was a label on the back of his pistol. “Only law enforcement agencies use it,” it said.
Small remembered how under the stricter rules for possession of weapons from the past he had to complete extensive documentation for the purchase of weapons and to go through inspections “much more than this 18-year-old child”. Even now, Small said, he would never support a gun ban, fearing some Democrats would. But he said Republicans like Abbott …
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