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Officials and family members were still trying to identify victims of Tuesday's mass shooting at a Texas elementary school when Republicans in the state began offering their usual platitudes and empty prayers. They also made it clear they won’t support any — and I mean, any — impactful gun safety measures to prevent the next one.
At least 19 students and two teachers were killed in Tuesday’s shooting in Uvalde, a small city about 85 miles west of San Antonio. The massacre came just days after a shooting rampage in Buffalo, New York, left 10 dead.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said the shooter, an 18-year-old high school student, shot and killed students and teachers “incomprehensibly.”
But he was wrong. Mass shootings have become commonplace in the United States, thanks in large part to the conservative bloodlust and greed that feeds our country’s sick infatuation with guns. Abbott, in fact, embodies that infatuation, as evidenced by a 2015 tweet that resurfaced after yesterday’s shooting.
During a Wednesday press conference, Beto O'Rourke, the state's Democratic gubernatorial nominee, confronted Abbott for his complicity in gun violence.
Abbott is scheduled to speak at a National Rifle Association Convention on Friday along with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, seen throwing a tantrum in the video above.
Responding to the shooting on Twitter, Cruz offered a version of the canned “thoughts and prayers” response Republicans tend to deploy after shootings to avoid actually doing anything substantive.
That wasn’t surprising. Like Abbott, Cruz acts like a shill for the gun lobby, which he’s demonstrated through his repeated efforts to block gun safety measures. And speaking to reporters Tuesday afternoon, Cruz made it clear we shouldn’t expect the most recent mass shooting in his state to move him in any way.
“Inevitably when there’s a murder of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” Cruz said. “That doesn’t work. It’s not effective. It doesn’t prevent crime.”
That claim is ironic coming from Cruz, who frequently poses as a supporter of law enforcement. If he were as attuned to the needs of police as he often suggests, he’d know law enforcement groups tend to back certain gun safety measures.
But Cruz’s stance is typical of conservatives when it comes to gun safety: They’re careless about who carries the burden for their perverted affinity for guns. That probably explains why Cruz proposed adding armed law enforcement to school campuses as a simple solution to mass shootings, despite the fact the gunman in Tuesday's shooting reportedly got past armed police officers.
As my colleague Steve Benen wrote for the MaddowBlog, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joined Cruz in suggesting more guns are needed in schools — except Paxton said teachers should be armed.
If it's not abundantly clear by now, the GOP is desperately trying to avoid criticizing guns. Another Texas Republican, Rep. Brian Babin, even tied love for guns to Christ on Tuesday, appearing on the right-wing network Newsmax to suggest that the love of guns is interwoven with America’s “Judeo-Christian foundation.”
As we listen to these deluded theories, it's important to note that Republicans aren’t just obstacles to progress; they’re literally backing laws that make massacres like Tuesday’s possible. The shooter was reportedly able to acquire his gun because Abbott signed a law last September that lowered the age someone can purchase a handgun without needing a permit from 21 to 18.
Through its policies, the Republican Party has become an accomplice to a plague — gun violence — that’s afflicted the U.S. for centuries. And despite children and teachers being gunned down in a classroom, Texas Republicans have no plans to change that.