O’Rourke headlines gun-control rally outside NRA convention in Houston

That debate occurred shortly after a white man armed with an AK-47, who had posted a manifesto expressing fears about an “invasion” of the United States by Hispanic immigrants, drove 650 miles from his Dallas-area home to a Walmart in El Paso and fatally shot 23 people.

Twenty-eight days later, a 36-year-old man shot and killed seven people and injured 25 others with an AR-15 in the Midland-Odessa area of West Texas.

O’Rourke cited those shootings when he pledged to take Americans’ assault rifles if elected president. Less than two months later, O’Rourke, struggling to gain traction in a crowded field, dropped out of the presidential race.

As O’Rourke launched his campaign for Texas governor in late 2021, critics pointed to his comments about confiscating firearms as an insurmountable liability in a gun-loving state where an estimated 37% of residents own them.

But O’Rourke’s flagging gubernatorial campaign got a major boost Wednesday when he confronted Abbott and other Texas Republican leaders at a press conference in the gym at Uvalde High School, as Abbott mentioned mental health problems as a possible reason why 18-year-old Salvador Ramos entered a classroom at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday and massacred 19 young children and two teachers, though he admitted Ramos had no known history of such problems or any criminal record.

“The time to stop this was after Santa Fe,” O’Rourke said, referring to the May 2018 shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, that left 10 dead. “You are doing nothing … This is on you until you choose to do something about it.”

Abbott pointedly ignored O’Rourke as police escorted him from the building. But Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin yelled that O’Rourke is a “sick son of a bitch.”

The shooting has placed Abbott’s record on gun laws and his reaction to mass shootings under a microscope, with media reports noting the two-term Republican governor has not made any pledges to address gun violence as he did after the Santa Fe shooting when he convened a series of roundtable discussions about school safety with shooting survivors, parents, teachers, law enforcement officials and state lawmakers at the Capitol in Austin.

While Abbott signed several bills in 2019 requiring school districts to develop emergency response plans and enhancing students' and teachers' access to mental health services, those have been overshadowed by his signing a “constitutional carry” bill last June, allowing people to carry handguns in public without a license or any training, over the opposition of law enforcement who warned it would make their jobs more dangerous.

"Politicians from the federal level to the local level have threatened to take guns from law-abiding citizens — but we will not let that happen in Texas," Abbott said at the time. "Texas will always be the leader in defending the Second Amendment, which is why we built a barrier around gun rights this session.”

Abbott, who received the NRA’s endorsement in February for his reelection bid, was scheduled to speak Friday at the group’s convention in Houston. But he has opted instead to return to Uvalde for another press conference.

A prerecorded message from Abbott will still be played at the NRA gathering.

Hidalgo, the chief elected official of Harris County, home of Houston, told the crowd Friday that Texas state Senator Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde, has asked Abbott to call a special session of the Texas Legislature – which meets every other year and is set to start its next regular session in January 2023 – to deal with gun violence.

"If Greg Abbott can call a special session, and a second special session and a third special session to keep people from voting, surely he can call a special session to keep babies from being murdered in their classrooms," Hidalgo shouted, speaking of Senate Bill 1, a voting restrictions bill pushed through by Texas GOP lawmakers last year.

The NRA boasts on its website that its convention features an exhibit hall showcasing "over 14 acres of the latest guns and gear from the most popular companies in the industry.”

One notable absence from the : Daniel Defense, a Georgia company that manufactured the AR-15 style assault rifle Ramos used to murder 21 people in a Uvalde classroom.

Ramos reportedly bought the weapon days after May 16, his 18th birthday. Texas law allows people to buy long guns once they turn 18.

Daniel Defense had planned to showcase its firearms at a booth at the convention but is said to have pulled out amid backlash from one of its recent social media posts that featured a young boy with a rifle on his lap and a  Bible quote, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

The NRA, which says it has 5.5 million members, supports gun rights and the Second Amendment with a religious fervor.

The late actor Charlton Heston, the NRA’s president from 1988 to 2003, had a ritual of holding up a Revolutionary War-era flintlock rifle at its annual conventions and telling the government, “I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.”

Now led by its CEO Wayne LaPierre, the NRA, based in New York since 1871, filed for bankruptcy in Dallas in January 2021 in a bid to reincorporate in Texas after New York Attorney General Letitia James accused four of its executives of stealing millions of dollars from it to fund their lavish lifestyles in a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the nonprofit.

She accused LaPierre of using the group’s donor money as his “personal piggy bank” for private jet trips to the tropics and African safaris.

A bankruptcy judge granted James’ motion to dismiss the NRA’s case in May 2021, concluding its Chapter 11 filing was “less like a traditional bankruptcy in which a debtor is faced with financial difficulties," but “filed to gain an unfair advantage in litigation” or to avoid regulation.

A New York Supreme Court justice in March nixed James’ efforts to dissolve the NRA, holding it would be unfair to the group’s members and possibly infringe on their free speech and assembly rights under the First Amendment. But he allowed the attorney general’s fraud claims against its executives to proceed.

Follow @cam_langford

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