We, The People

Not only did the Odessa gunman have a criminal history...

...he also previously failed a gun purchase background check in Texas...

...& he didn’t go thru a background check for the gun he used in Odessa.

We must keep guns out of criminals’ hands. https://t.co/vgrqcHtBtF

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) September 2, 2019

Yes, we must; but Gov. Abbott can't be bothered to so much as call

 a special session of the Legislature to do something about it.

There is a common thread in these two stories, one about Pence shuttling back and forth across Ireland so he can stay at Trump's Irish resort and the government can pay for the VP and his entourage to stay there (as well as pay for the flights):

“If we had a functioning government, Congress would be in full throttle investigating this administration,” Capehart said. “But because one of the houses of Congress is in control of — by the president’s party, you think Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is going to step out there and investigate his own president when he has judgeships and Supreme Court seats and more tax cuts and budget things they want to get through, long-held Republican and conservative majorities — they are looking the other way.”

Now match that up with this statement about gun laws in Texas, which are pretty much written to allow the crazies to carry guns because we can't get guns out of the hands of criminals until they commit a criminal act like a mass shooting; or, in the case of the shooter in Midland/Odessa, we can't keep guns out of the hands of criminals, something Gov. Abbott neatly elides in that tweet above:

After so many mass shootings during his tenure, Abbott clearly feels he needs to be seen appearing to take action. But make no mistake: These words are empty noise. Abbott and the Texas Republican Party, which has a death-grip on power in the state, have no intention of taking any meaningful action to stop mass shootings — or any kind of shootings — in their state. On the contrary, while the cities of Midland and Odessa were still reeling from the effects of a man driving around shooting strangers on the streets, a new slate of laws loosening restrictions on guns were going into effect.

Both of these statements are true and correct, but we don't have a functioning government in Washington because we don't want one.  Trump's victory was a surprise, as evidenced by the fact he had a Republican Congress.  Voters clearly went to the polls voting for divided government once again, but they got the GOP in charge top to bottom.  Two years later they corrected their error, but only half-way.  It is now considered not extraordinary if they finish the task and put Democrats in charge top to bottom in 2020, even though just a few months ago that was considered beyond possibility.  But for the moment "we the people" still have the government we voted for.

It's easy to blame the political parties for this parlous state, and in Texas I do.  Texas had been a one-party state, and that party Democratic, since Reconstruction.  However, as moss-bound and hard-shelled conservative as Texas was, that party produce Cactus Jack Garner, one of FDR's most progressive VP's; and Mr. Sam Rayburn, who taught LBJ how to be a legislator; and of course LBJ, probably the most liberal President in U.S. history (don't let his entanglement in Vietnam fool you).  Now Texas is again a one-party state, and that party so reactionary and relentless in its pursuit of culture war fodder most Texas Republicans are more Catholic than the Pope (or, to put it in the correct cultural context, more Southern Baptist than the SBC).  But that change was not imposed on us by aliens from another planet, nor by Russian internet trolls who, it turns out, aren't really all that clever.

Like the "Monsters" on Maple Street, we did all this to ourselves.  Sure, we had help from Newt Gingrich and the astroturf of the Tea Party (pace NYT, that was never a "grassroots" movement.  I remember it from the beginning, even if your reporters don't) and even the Koch Brothers (who learned all they needed to know from Jack Welch and the John Birch Society).  Sure, this started when LBJ trounced Goldwater, and the Goldwaterites vowed revenge, no matter how long it took.  (There is a history to this nation, and it didn't start in 1776 and end with Kennedy's assassination!)  But it all took root because we the people were so happy and eager to believe it.

And like violence, that ignorance and racism and xenophobia and myopia and historical amnesia, is as American as cherry pie.  The GOP didn't take over the Senate in some kind of electoral "hack."  We the people voted them in.  Greg Abbott didn't use mind control to work his will on the voters of Texas; they elected him, over and over, after electing Rick Perry to the Governor's mansion for 16 years in a row.  Texans have drunk the NRA poison about guns and the 2nd Amendment (I remember when the NRA was solely about hunting and gun safety.  Whatever mad cow disease took them over may be running its course; we have yet to see.) kool-aid to the powdery dregs, and insist on their right to bear arms, if not arm bears, with a ferocity that is felt in Austin every two years.  Believe me, what the Lege passed this last session is not enough for the true gun-toting crazies, who will argue with Meghan McCain that their borne arms keep the elephants away (the convenience of never being near an elephant going unmentioned for obvious reasons).  It is too much for me, but as Molly Ivins often pointed out in irony, it's a representative democracy.

And a lot of people in Texas are just that stupid when it comes to guns.  It's not that Abbott and the GOP have a throttle hold on Texas (nor that Austin, where Marcotte lived, is a blueberry in a sea of cherries; but that's another argument); we did this to ourselves.  In the immortal words of Pogo:  "We have met the enemy, and he is us!"  It could be a statement of Christian theology, that.  In fact, if we don't begin there, we don't get anywhere.  Animals, after all, are not shooting us.  If wolves did this, or wild boar, or packs of feral dogs, we would respond with slaughter on them.  But since its shooters, we blame the weapon, call the killer "crazy," and shake our heads to dispel any possibility we could be responsible.  But we are responsible; every last one of us.  We do this to ourselves and our children and our families and our friends and our neighbors.  We don't just allow it, we do it.

We might as well face that.  Maybe if we did, we'd do something about it.  Until we do, until we put down the 2nd Amendment and look at the state of our union, our Constitution is nothing more than a mutual suicide pact.  Last person standing "wins" their "God-given" right to carry a gun; and the booby prize, of being the last person standing for such a stupid, heinous, murderous, idea.