Yeah no Nancy

A major talking point of Dem partisans is that the party is good, the only problem is Manchin and Sinema. Which would be more convincing if the party leadership weren't absolutely intent on defending Manchin, Sinema & their counterparts in the House. https://t.co/LOF7EKuxUq

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) May 28, 2022

Two Trump appointees and Federalist Society members dispense with federalism. https://t.co/aKQY1MEoEF

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) May 27, 2022

Yet another Wall Street billionaire funded Super PAC running interference in local races, spending millions to peddle lies and distortions, pushing a pro-corporate agenda on a district that has consistently stood against the corporate greed hurting our families. https://t.co/n7l23xLGqm

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) May 27, 2022

"A new PAC endorsed by Bakari Sellers says it’s going to spend upward of $1 million to support one of the candidates trying to unseat progressive firebrand Rashida Tlaib."
https://t.co/11AVSQfCU5

— HalalFlow (@halalflow) May 27, 2022

No @SenRonJohnson, My daughter Jaime did not die because of wokeness or CRT. Your comments may be the dumbest, most pathetic yet trying to explain this. I think you are a fucking moron. I am Jaime's dad and I will not stop until you are fired.https://t.co/eMmfLcQtP0

— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) May 28, 2022

Everything is responsible for school shootings EXCEPT for guns, says the Senator who has taken $1,269,486 from the NRA.pic.twitter.com/YFiKWQoYBN

— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) May 27, 2022

Today I delivered Ron Johnson a fat check from the NRA to remind him that blood is on his hands by taking $1.2 million dollars from the gun lobby and refusing to pass common sense gun reform.

The point is simple – Ron is a do-nothing Senator because the NRA lines his pockets. pic.twitter.com/i5F54OTsiB

— Tom Nelson (@NelsonforWI) May 27, 2022

A gun and a prayer: How the far right took control of Texas’ response to mass shootings

As the gunman approached her family cowering in the corner of the restaurant, Suzanna Hupp wanted nothing more than a gun in her hand.

But Texas law in 1991 didn’t allow that, leaving her defenseless. Her parents died holding each other on the floor of that Luby’s restaurant in Killeen. Twenty-one other diners and the gunman also died that day.

The Luby’s shooting, as it became known, shocked the nation and galvanized Hupp, who escaped through a window. She spent the next 30 years, including 10 in the state legislature, fighting to give others the option she did not have.

Unlike other mass shooting survivors who advocate for gun restrictions – the parents of Sandy Hook students or the teenagers who watched their classmates die at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School – Hupp’s goal has been eliminating gun regulations.

For all the conversation about common sense and compromise, these are the two fundamental choices — the answer to preventing future tragedy is either fewer guns, or more.

At their core, these philosophies are not a Venn diagram. They are ideologically distinct and incompatible worldviews.

While there will be discussions in the coming weeks about incremental steps and public support for tightening gun regulations, the political reality is that three decades of Republican dominance have erased the middle ground. In Texas, the chosen response to mass shootings is a gun and a prayer.

The state’s elected officials, influenced by an ultra-conservative religious movement and profit-driven gun companies, have chosen the path of least regulation, elevating firearms into a referendum on faith and freedom.

Addressing the state Wednesday after a gunman massacred 19 students and two teachers, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick made it clear how the state should respond to mass shootings.

“In these other shootings — Sutherland Springs, El Paso, Odessa, Santa Fe — it’s God that brings a community together. It’s God that heals a community,” Patrick said. “If we don’t turn back as a nation to understanding what we were founded upon and what we were taught by our parents and what we believe in, then these situations will only get worse.”

Texas is on a path that may not reflect public opinion, but absolutely reflects the larger political forces sweeping the state. And it’s not just Texas: Republican state legislatures, data shows, are 115% more likely to pass legislation loosening gun laws in response to mass shootings.

Texas remains among the more heavily armed states in the country — more than a third of Texas households have a gun, and while the rate of household gun ownership has declined nationally since the 1980s, it has not declined as quickly or consistently in Texas.

More than 1.7 million Texans have an active state firearm license, and Texas has more federally registered guns than any other state. Nationally, data shows two-thirds of gun owners own more than one gun, and nearly a third own five or more guns.

“If the states are laboratories of democracy, where we figure out what policies work, you might think over time we’d converge on a set of policies,” said Chris Poliquin, who researches gun laws at the University of California – Los Angeles. “But you don’t actually see that on gun policy.”

When the pickup truck crashed through the plate glass window of the Luby’s, Suzanna Hupp assumed it was an accident.

When the driver pulled out a gun, she assumed it was a robbery.

It wasn’t until he started shooting — picking off patrons, one by one — that she realized what was happening.

“It took me a good 45 seconds, which is an eternity during something like that,” she said. “Now, it would be the first thing your mind goes to, but back then, we hadn’t had anything like that before.”

It was 1991, long before the era of active shooter drills and school lockdowns. It would be another eight years until the shooting at Columbine High School, and three decades before a man walked into an elementary school in Uvalde and massacred 19 students and two teachers.

It was also an era of much tighter gun laws in Texas. Hupp’s handgun was in the glove compartment of her car. She feared losing her chiropractor’s license if caught violating the state’s prohibition on carrying a concealed weapon.

“I realized we were just sitting ducks,” she said. “That is just the most sickening feeling in the world to just wait for it to be your turn.”

Hupp emerged from that shooting with a new mission, and the gun rights movement had a new crusader.

“I testified in, I don’t know, 25 different states, some of them a couple of times,” she said. “And they all have concealed carry now.”

Her argument has been simple but effective: stricter gun laws would not have stopped the gunman who killed her parents. A gun would have. She believes the key to preventing more gun deaths is more guns — mental health treatment and better risk assessment, too, but most importantly, more guns in more places.

“Here’s the truth of the matter that no one can argue with,” she said. “If I’d had my gun that day, even if I had screwed it up somehow, it would have changed the odds, wouldn’t it?”

When Hupp first got involved in the gun rights movement, many states banned concealed carry and the United States was on the verge of passing a federal assault weapons ban.

But a change had been building for some time. Since the 1960s, the country had been in the process of shifting from what Wake Forest University researcher David Yamane calls “gun culture 1.0” — guns for sport or recreation — to 2.0 — guns for self-defense.

“A lot of people in developed, suburbanized parts of the country who maybe previously thought they didn’t need a gun anymore, because they’re not on the frontier, start to develop the notion that they might have to defend themselves,” Yamane said. “That link has become much more prominent these days.”

Hupp’s story capitalized on a previously unimaginable idea that a man might come into the restaurant where you’re eating and just start shooting. This free-floating fear has morphed in recent years depending on the moment — gun sales spiked during the original COVID lockdowns, and amid the 2020 racial justice protests, and they tend to rise after mass shootings like the one in Uvalde.

“In the 90s and 2000s, people really do start to see guns increasingly as a viable option to face down crime, uncertainty and unrest,” said Yamane. “There’s an element of defensive gun ownership that looks at the gun as a tool of last resort for when the worst possible thing is happening.”

At the same time, the National Rifle Association began bringing more of its lobbying firepower to state legislatures, fomenting the idea that the world was full of things that needed defending against.

“The NRA built this identity around gun ownership, and then it portrayed that identity as being threatened,” said Matthew Lacombe, the author of Firepower: How the NRA Turned Gun Owners into a Political Force. “So the minority of Americans who oppose gun control are historically more politically active than the majority that support.”

In Texas, like other red states, the NRA slid sideways into the newfound alliance between evangelical Christians and the Republican Party, aligning gun rights with the religious right.

Gun ownership became a symbolic weapon in fighting the culture wars.

“I am not really here to talk about the Second Amendment or the NRA, but the gun issue clearly brings into focus the war that’s going on,” said then-NRA President Charlton Heston in a 1997 speech. “Mainstream America is depending on you … to draw your sword and fight for them.”

.@SenBillCassidy, my daughter was murdered in Parkland. I am speechless you would compare her murder to killing a feral pig. But since you did, you are a fucking crazy lunatic who should have zero role in the safety of Americans. I am Jaime's dad and I will work to fire you. https://t.co/YwZLbPJ4cK

— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) May 29, 2022

https://twitter.com/IssueFortyFive/status/1530717668029804546?s=20&t=_oCM78-soQohYIA75M-N-g

https://t.co/rc6wMLwCPO

— Lil Lazer Beam (@BelovedLazer) May 30, 2022