AUSTIN, Texas — Gov. Greg Abbott has had to respond before to a mass shooting in a Texas school.
There are signs his earlier attempt to tinker with Texas gun laws left Abbott, a politician renowned for caution, even more risk-averse.
As Abbott looks ahead to this month’s state GOP convention, which party officials say they’re unsure he’ll attend; the Nov. 8 election, which he’s still favored to win; and possibly, a bid for the White House in 2024, he probably has little incentive to try to tighten any gun laws, several experts agreed.
It’s likely Abbott won’t advocate anything that runs counter to his party’s base, two professors and two veterans of Texas’ recent gun-safety debates agreed. Instead, they said they expect the Republican governor to hunker down, talk mostly about mental health and more secure schools, and wait for the public’s attention to wane – as it always has, at least before Uvalde.
“This represents the return of the Janus-faced Abbott, who talks one way and acts another,” said University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus. He referred to a Roman god of gateways, usually represented by a double-faced head.
“He’s afraid to anger any side before a potentially tight election. He’s seen the same polling we all have, which suggests that significant portions of the Texas public want to see common sense gun reform, and he’s worried about losing coalition partners, like college-educated women and suburban Texans,” Rottinghaus said. “His sort of obfuscation on this is a return to the kind of political weathervane that he’s been in the past.”
In the wake of Uvalde, Abbott’s unlikely to offer a gun-restricting proposal of any kind, said Harel Shapira, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin who has studied gun culture.
“To the extent that you’re going to see a response here, a clear response, it’s going to be that we need to further arm the police officers, and possibly teachers,” he said.
Though most Republican elected officials are circumspect about criticizing Abbott, former GOP Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson dinged him for not staring down “lying” gun rights advocates who say no version of an extreme-risk protective-order law can honor the Second Amendment. Nineteen states have such “red flag” laws, which allow judges to order that guns be temporarily turned over by or confiscated from someone who poses a risk to self or others.
If they provide due process, time limits for gun removals and penalties for false statements – in, say, a nasty divorce fight – such laws have merit, said Patterson, an outspoken gun rights advocate known to carry a revolver in his boot and a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol at the small of his back.
Although Abbott’s not solely to blame for state leaders’ paralysis on guns, he had a golden opportunity in 2018, he said.
“Sometimes, you have to actually use the bully pulpit and lead even if it’s a political risk,” said Patterson, a former Marine who authored the state’s 1995 concealed handgun law. “When you find something that can make a difference and it respects constitutional rights and it can be passed, you need to advocate for it,” he said of a well-crafted red flag law.
As for Abbott, “when it became clear that it was not going to pass, he bailed on it,” despite pleas just weeks earlier for lawmakers to “consider the merits” of the proposal, Patterson noted.
Late Thursday, Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze dismissed such criticisms, questioning the attention spans – and motives – of the governor’s detractors.
Earlier in the week, she noted, Abbott asked the House and Senate to form special study committees and ordered “immediate school safety reviews” at public school campuses.
“While some are politicizing this senseless tragedy to further their political careers, Governor Abbott has been leading the state’s response since day one, sharing information … and working to ensure the Uvalde community has all available resources and support during this heartbreaking time,” Eze said. “Anyone who criticizes the governor for not addressing this tragedy is not paying attention and is only looking to score political points.”
Letting Legislature lead
Anyone paying attention, though, has noticed subtle differences in Abbott’s response to the May 24 killings of 19 students and two teachers at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School, as compared with previous, large-scale mass shootings during his seven-year, five-month tenure as governor.
For one, he’s yielded leadership of immediate talks on what to do to the Legislature.
After a church massacre in Sutherland Springs in November 2017 (26 people slain by a gunman) and the Santa Fe High shootings in May 2018 (10 slain), Abbott presided over three days of roundtable discussions before issuing a 44-page report full of recommendations.
After a store massacre in El Paso (23 slain) and mayhem along roadways in Midland-Odessa (seven slain, 25 injured by a gunman) in August 2019, Abbott empaneled a Texas Safety Commission and a Domestic Terrorism Task Force. The governor then sped out eight executive orders – most, about handling of suspicious activity reports – and a 15-page call to action.
On Wednesday Abbott asked Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Speaker Dade Phelan to convene panels to study lessons from Uvalde. Abbott cited five broad topics, the last of which was “firearm safety.”
Another difference in Abbott’s response this time? So far, he has avoided any talk of gun restrictions.
“There are thousands of laws on the books across the country that limit the owning or using of firearms, laws that have not stopped madmen from carrying out evil acts on innocent people,” he told the National Rifle Association three days after the Uvalde shootings.
Painful history
Four years ago, at a similar moment in the political calendar, the Republican governor had won renomination, was mulling how to handle his party’s sometimes-unruly state convention – and yet was far more willing to talk about guns. On May 18 of that year, a 17-year-old boy took his parents’ shotgun and revolver to Santa Fe High and killed eight students and two teachers, wounding 13 others.
As the tumultuous summer of 2018 began, Abbott was open to a red flag law and tougher penalties for parents who don’t properly lock away their firearms.
Militant gun rights activists assailed him, though. The state GOP’s platform committee opposed a red flag law, saying only criminals and certifiably mentally incompetent people should be stripped of guns. As for gun storage, “We oppose mandates [because] it is the responsibility of an individual to safely store his or her firearms,” the platform said.
At that year’s state convention in San Antonio, Abbott recalled that just hours after their family members were gunned down in Sutherland Springs, victims’ relatives pleaded with him, “Governor, do not let them use this to take away our guns!”
Ten days later, while a special House panel was hearing testimony about extreme-risk protective orders, Abbott tweeted, “I don’t advocate red flag laws. Only that it is something the legislature can consider.” A month later, after a special Senate panel likewise discussed a red flag law, Patrick issued a press release pronouncing the idea dead in his chamber. The lieutenant governor, who sometimes enjoys frosty relations with Abbott, noted the governor’s seeming flip-flop.
“Abbott formally asked the legislature to consider ‘Red Flag’ laws in May so I added them to the charges I gave to the select committee. However, Gov. Abbott has since said he doesn’t advocate ‘Red Flag’ laws,” said Patrick, who insisted he himself had always opposed them.
Despite absorbing such jabs, even after El Paso and Midland-Odessa, Abbott in September 2019 continued to talk in his “Texas Safety Action Report” about tougher penalties for illegally trying to purchase a gun, a ban on “straw purchases” by criminals and a $1 million ad campaign promoting safe gun storage.
But by last year’s session, amid a pandemic and discussions of the state’s rickety electric grid, Abbott tacked rightward on guns. He made making Texas a “Second Amendment sanctuary state” a legislative priority. Just more than five weeks after former Dallas state Sen. Don Huffines announced he’d challenge Abbott in the GOP gubernatorial primary, the two-term incumbent signed a bill to let Texans carry handguns without a license or training.
A disappointed victim
In late 2018, at the Governor’s Mansion in Austin, Abbott reportedly told Flo Rice, a survivor of the Santa Fe bloodbath, that he would “make it a priority” to create a commission to look into the Galveston County high school incident. At the time, a “Parkland commission” reporting to Florida’s GOP leaders about that year’s Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland (Broward County) was wrapping up a 455-page report.
“He said he would make it a priority to get it done,” Rice, a substitute teacher who was shot six times in the hips and legs, said of Abbott and a Santa Fe commission. “Nothing came of it.”
When told of Rice’s account, Eze, the Abbott spokeswoman, did not respond.
Eze also did not respond to Rice’s disparagement of legislative studies Abbott requested after Uvalde.
“He’s just doing it to make it look like he’s doing something,” said Rice, now 59. “He’s just dragging this out.”
Abbott and other state GOP leaders prefer to discuss school architecture, social media, a decline in public morality – anything other than the killing capabilities of modern firearms, said Ed Scruggs, a gun-control advocate who formerly was president of Texas Gun Sense.
In a recent op-ed in the Houston Chronicle and an interview with The Dallas Morning News, Scruggs described as “surreal” his observations as a participant in Abbott’s 2018 roundtables and 2019 Texas Safety Commission meetings. Behind closed doors, Abbott and Patrick talked of “taking meaningful action,” only to wilt after Second Amendment hard liners objected, he said.
After Uvalde, Abbott has muddied discussion of raising the age to 21, from 18, for buying semi automatic rifles, Scruggs complained.
At a press conference in Uvalde on May 27, Abbott said, “Ever since Texas has been a state, an 18-year-old has had the ability to buy a long gun, a rifle. Maybe we’re focusing our attention on the wrong thing.”
Retorted Scruggs: “As if the murder weapon at Uvalde and El Paso is a deer rifle. It’s almost laughable, but that’s the game that they play with language. They don’t want to use the real language.”
Asked about Scruggs’ comment, Eze did not respond.
Veteran GOP consultant and lobbyist Bill Miller said Florida’s Republican leaders may have reacted to the Parkland killing spree, which claimed 17 lives, by passing a red flag law and raising the age to 21 for buying semi automatic rifles. Don’t expect the same here, he said.
“Texas is more severe in its love of guns than Florida, and perhaps anywhere besides Alaska,” he said. “We just have a history. We were a separate nation. We fought wars to free ourselves. We’re on a border with a foreign country. Guns are part of our DNA. There’s no other state quite like us.”
