Category: Labor and Working

The New York Times

Debate Over Guns Unfolds in Uvalde, a Rural Texas Town in Grief

Jack Healy and Natalie Kitroeff – May 29, 2022

UVALDE, Texas — Living in a rural Texas town renowned for white-tailed deer hunting, where rifles are a regular prize at school raffles, Desirae Garza never thought much about gun laws. That changed after her 10-year-old niece, Amerie Jo, was fatally shot inside Robb Elementary School.

“You can’t purchase a beer, and yet you can buy an AR-15,” Garza said of the 18-year-old gunman who authorities say legally bought two semi-automatic rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition days before killing 19 children and two teachers. “It’s too easy.”

But inside another Uvalde home, Amerie Jo’s father, Alfred Garza III, had a sharply different view. In the wake of his daughter’s killing, he said he was considering buying a holster to strap on the handgun he now leaves in his home or truck.

“Carrying it on my person is not a bad idea after all this,” he said.

An anguished soul-searching over Texas’ gun culture and permissive gun laws is unfolding across the latest community to be shattered by a shooter’s rampage.

Uvalde, a largely Mexican American city of 15,200 near the southern border, is a far different place from Parkland, Florida, or Newtown, Connecticut, which became centers of grassroots gun control activism in the aftermath of the school shootings there.

Gun ownership is threaded into life here in a county that has elected conservative Democrats and twice supported former President Donald Trump. Several relatives of victims count themselves among Texas’ more than 1 million gun owners. Some grew up hunting and shooting. Others say they own multiple guns for protection.

In Uvalde, the debate has unfolded not through protests and marches, as it did after Parkland, but in quieter discussions inside people’s living rooms and at vigils, in some cases exposing rifts within grieving families. The grandfather of one boy killed Tuesday said he always keeps a gun under the seat of his truck to protect his family; the boy’s grandmother now wants to limit gun access.

Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed a law last year making Texas a “Second Amendment sanctuary” from federal gun laws, and other Republicans have dismissed calls for tightening access to guns in the wake of the Uvalde shooting. They have instead called for improving school security and mental health counseling.

But public opinion surveys and interviews with victims’ families and Uvalde residents suggest that many Texans are more open to gun control measures than their Republican leaders and would support expanding background checks and raising the age requirement to buy assault-style rifles to 21 from 18.

Trey Laborde, a local rancher, brought his gun to a fundraiser for relatives of victims of the shooting, where he was helping to smoke meat. Laborde said he despises President Joe Biden, thinks the 2020 election was stolen and recoils at calls to take away people’s guns. He believes “all these teachers should be armed.”

But he also wants more limits on gun access.

“I don’t think that anybody should be able to buy a gun unless they’re 25,” Laborde said. He was recently given an assault rifle as a gift by his father-in-law but said, “I don’t think they should be sold.” He added, “Nobody hunts with those types of rifles.”

Public support for some gun control measures has held steady throughout recent years of opinion polls as Texas was rocked by deadly mass shootings at a Walmart in El Paso and in the streets of Odessa.

In a February poll by the University of Texas/Texas Politics Project, 43% of Texans said they supported stricter gun laws, while just 16% wanted looser rules. In earlier polls, majorities supported universal background checks and were against allowing gun owners to carry handguns in public without a license or training; 71% of Texans supported background checks on all gun purchases, according to a poll from the University of Texas/Texas Politics Project in 2021.

Three hundred miles away from Uvalde, raw divisions over gun rights in Texas were on vivid display Friday as hundreds of gun control supporters protested outside an annual National Rifle Association convention in Houston. Inside, Trump and others blamed “evil” and an array of social ills for the attacks, but not easy access to guns.

Abbott withdrew from speaking in person at the convention and instead traveled to Uvalde amid mounting anger over revelations that the police response was delayed in confronting and killing the gunman.

The Roman Catholic archbishop of San Antonio, whose territory includes Uvalde, said the NRA should have canceled its meeting in Houston. “The country is in mourning, but they are not,” Gustavo García-Siller, the archbishop, said in an interview, calling the embrace of guns “a culture of death in our midst.”

Vincent Salazar, 66, whose granddaughter Layla was killed in the Uvalde attack, said he had kept guns in his house for 30 years for protection. But as he grieved the girl who won three blue ribbons at Robb Elementary’s field day, he said he wanted lawmakers to at least raise the age for selling long guns such as the black AR-15-style rifle used in his granddaughter’s killing.

“This freedom to carry, what did it do?” Salazar asked. “It killed.”

Several parents and relatives of Uvalde’s victims said they wanted politicians in Texas to follow the lead of six states that have raised the age for buying semi-automatic rifles to 21 from 18. But gun rights supporters are challenging those laws in court and recently won a legal victory after an appeals court struck down California’s ban on selling semi-automatic guns to young adults.

Javier Cazares, whose daughter Jacklyn was killed inside Robb Elementary, carries a gun and fully supports the Second Amendment, having learned how to fire semi-automatic rifles at 18 when he enlisted in the U.S. Army. But he said the killing of Jacklyn and so many of her fourth-grade friends should force politicians into tightening gun measures.

“There should be a lot stricter laws,” he said. “To buy a weapon at 18 — it’s kind of ridiculous.”

Even as many in Uvalde have said they want to focus their attention on the victims, the conversation about guns has been reverberating through town. Kendall White, who guides groups on hunting trips, helped cook at Friday’s barbecue fundraiser for relatives of victims of the attack.

White said he would never give up the right to “legally go out and harvest an animal and bring it home to my kids.” He crowed over the fact that his daughter shot her first white-tailed deer at the age of 3.

“She was sitting on my lap,” he said.

White believes people are the problem — not guns. “Guns don’t kill nobody, period,” he said. “You’ve got to have somebody pull the trigger.”

But the recent mass shootings have weighed on White, 45, and this one, in his hometown, left him gutted.

He said he wants some things to change.

“He should never have been able to get that gun,” White said, referring to the gunman. “We should raise the age limit. We should do stronger background checks.” There is room, he said, “for some compromises” on gun laws.

Ricardo García was working a shift as a groundskeeper at Uvalde Memorial Hospital on Tuesday when the first students from Robb Elementary were hustled inside the emergency room, followed by a group of parents. As the hours wore on, he said, the hospital began informing families that their children had died.

Mothers screamed the word “no” over and over. Fathers banged on the walls of the hospital.

García said he has never owned a gun and now believes the only way to solve gun violence in America is to ban them for everyone other than law enforcement.

“They’ve got to stop selling the guns,” he said. “The governor’s got to do something about it.”

One child, who came in with blood on his shirt, told his parents that he was right next to the gunman as he was shooting, and now the boy could not hear out of one ear.

“He had an AR-15, man, inside a classroom,” García said. “It’s going to make a lot of noise for those kids.”

The grief swirling through the little green house where Eliahana Torres once cared for her goldfish and practiced her softball swing into the night was still raw as relatives gathered to grapple with her killing.

An uncle, Leo Flores, said that someday, some other gunman would attack another school. He said the best hope for preventing more bloodshed was to arm and prepare teachers — a view shared by many conservative politicians and residents across Texas.

But inside the house, Eliahana’s grandfather, Victor Cabrales, said the seeming inevitability of another mass shooting was a clarion call for stronger gun restrictions.

“It’s because we don’t do nothing,” he said. “We need a change. A real change. Not just words.”

Yahoo! News

Uvalde newspaper publishes powerful front page 2 days after school massacre

Dylan Stableford, Senior Writer – May 26, 2022

The Uvalde Leader-News, a locally owned newspaper in Uvalde, Texas, published a powerful front page on Thursday, two days after 19 children and two teachers were killed in the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.

The cover of the twice-weekly paper was completely black, except for the date of the massacre — May 24, 2022 — a stark reminder of the darkness that has enveloped the community of about 16,000 people in southwest Texas.

Inside, the first 10 pages of the 12-page paper contain news from what would have been an ordinary week in a small town: graduations, taxes, local elections, weather, sports. Three collegiate rodeo athletes have qualified for the National Rodeo Finals, the paper reported.

There is almost no indication of the carnage that unfolded on Tuesday, except for the announcement of a blood drive at the civic center on Saturday (there is an urgent need for donors, particularly those with type O blood, the paper said) and an advertisement for the Robb School Memorial Fund established by the First State Bank of Uvalde. An ad for the Uvalde Honey Festival, which had been scheduled for June 10 and 11, shows that it has been canceled without explanation.

The final two pages, however, are dedicated to the tragedy.

Under the headline “City’s Soul Crushed,” the back page of the paper includes photos of children being taken out of the school through windows, and a teacher running to safety after the last of her students were evacuated.

Another shows the suspect’s abandoned pickup truck crashed in a ditch, and a rifle, believed to be the shooter’s, sitting atop a duffel bag on the ground next to the passenger door.

There is also a story about the school district’s graduation ceremonies, which had been scheduled for Friday, being postponed.

“My heart is broken,” Hal Harrell, the district’s superintendent, is quoted as saying. “We are a small community and we are going to need your prayers to get through this.”

Insider

Switzerland has a stunningly high rate of gun ownership — here’s why it doesn’t have mass shootings

Hilary Brueck – May 25, 2022

• Switzerland hasn’t had a mass shooting in 21 years.
• In the US, there is almost one every day.
• The Swiss have strict rules for who can get a gun, and take firearm training very seriously.
• Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Switzerland hasn’t had a mass shooting since 2001, when a man stormed the local parliament in Zug, killing 14 people and then himself.

The country has about 2 million privately owned guns in a nation of 8.3 million people. In 2016, the country had 47 attempted homicides with firearms. The country’s overall murder rate is near zero.

The National Rifle Association often points to Switzerland to argue that more rules on gun ownership aren’t necessary. In 2016, the NRA said on its blog that the European country had one of the lowest murder rates in the world while still having millions of privately owned guns and a few hunting weapons that don’t even require a permit.

Video: Inside a factory that makes untraceable ‘ghost guns’

Untraceable ‘ghost guns’ are easier than ever to 3D-print — we went inside a company that helps people do it

“Ghost guns” don’t require background checks or serial numbers, meaning they can’t be traced. Some companies are taking advantage of the legal loophole that has allowed this industry to go unregulated.

But the Swiss have some specific rules and regulations for gun use.

Insider took a look at the country’s past with guns to see why it has lower rates of gun violence than the US, where gun death rates are now at their highest in more than 20 years, and the leading cause of death for children and adolescents.

Having an armed citizenry helped keep the Swiss neutral for more than 200 years.

The Swiss stance is one of “armed neutrality.”

Switzerland hasn’t taken part in any international armed conflict since 1815, but some Swiss soldiers help with peacekeeping missions around the world.

Many Swiss see gun ownership as part of a patriotic duty to protect their homeland.

Most Swiss men are required to learn how to use a gun.

Unlike the US, Switzerland has mandatory military service for men.

All men between the ages of 18 and 34 deemed “fit for service” are given a pistol or a rifle and trained.

After they’ve finished their service, the men can typically buy and keep their service weapons, but they have to get a permit for them.

In recent years, the Swiss government has voted to reduce the size of the country’s armed forces.

Switzerland is a bit like a well-designed fort.

Switzerland’s borders are basically designed to blow up on command, with at least 3,000 demolition points on bridges, roads, rails, and tunnels around the landlocked European country.

John McPhee put it this way in his book “La Place de la Concorde Suisse”:

“Near the German border of Switzerland, every railroad and highway tunnel has been prepared to pinch shut explosively. Nearby mountains have been made so porous that whole divisions can fit inside them.”

Roughly a quarter of the gun-toting Swiss use their weapons for military or police duty.

In 2000, more than 25% of Swiss gun owners said they kept their weapon for military or police duty, while less than 5% of Americans said the same.

In addition to the militia’s arms, the country has about 2 million privately owned guns — a figure that has been plummeting over the past decade.

The Swiss government has estimated that about half of the privately owned guns in the country are former service rifles. But there are signs the Swiss gun-to-human ratio is dwindling.

In 2007, the Small Arms Survey found that Switzerland had the third-highest ratio of civilian firearms per 100 residents (46), outdone by only the US (89) and Yemen (55).

But it seems that figure has dropped over the past decade. It’s now estimated that there’s about one civilian gun for every three Swiss people.

Gun sellers follow strict licensing procedures.

Swiss authorities decide on a local level whether to give people gun permits. They also keep a log of everyone who owns a gun in their region, known as a canton, though hunting rifles and some semiautomatic long arms are exempt from the permit requirement.

But cantonal police don’t take their duty dolling out gun licenses lightly. They might consult a psychiatrist or talk with authorities in other cantons where a prospective gun buyer has lived before to vet the person.

Swiss laws are designed to prevent anyone who’s violent or incompetent from owning a gun.

People who’ve been convicted of a crime or have an alcohol or drug addiction aren’t allowed to buy guns in Switzerland.

The law also states that anyone who “expresses a violent or dangerous attitude” won’t be permitted to own a gun.

Gun owners who want to carry their weapon for “defensive purposes” also have to prove they can properly load, unload, and shoot their weapon and must pass a test to get a license.

Switzerland is also one of the richest, healthiest, and, by some measures, happiest countries in the world.

Switzerland was ranked sixth in the UN’s 2019 World Happiness Report.

The Swiss have been consistently near the top of this list. In 2017, when Switzerland was ranked fourth overall among nations, the report authors noted that the country tends to do well on “all the main factors found to support happiness: caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income and good governance.”

Meanwhile, according to the report, happiness has taken a dive over the past decade in the US.

The report authors cite “declining social support and increased corruption,” as well as addiction and depression for the fall.

But the Swiss aren’t perfect when it comes to guns.

Switzerland still has one of the highest rates of gun violence in Europe, and most gun deaths in the country are suicides.

Around the world, stronger gun laws have been linked to fewer gun deaths. That has been the case in Switzerland too.

After hundreds of years of letting local cantons determine gun rules, Switzerland passed its first federal regulations on guns in 1999, after the country’s crime rate increased during the 1990s.

Since then, more provisions have been added to keep the country on par with EU gun laws, and gun deaths, including suicides, have continued to drop.

As of 2015, the Swiss estimated that only about 11% of citizens kept their military-issued gun at home.

Most people aren’t allowed to carry their guns around in Switzerland.

Concealed-carry permits are tough to get in Switzerland, and most people who aren’t security workers or police officers don’t have one.

“We have guns at home, but they are kept for peaceful purposes,” Martin Killias, a professor of criminology at Zurich University, told the BBC in 2013. “There is no point taking the gun out of your home in Switzerland because it is illegal to carry a gun in the street.”

That’s mostly true. Hunters and sports shooters are allowed to transport their guns only from their home to the firing range — they can’t just stop off for coffee with their rifle.

And guns cannot be loaded during transport to prevent them from accidentally firing in a place like Starbucks — something that has happened in the US at least twice.