Where are the major Republican donors who can put pressure on Arizona Republicans to do something about gun violence? Use your financial clout.
The Dallas Morning News reports, Texas GOP donors urge Congress to act on gun control measures:
Major Republican donors, including some who have contributed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaigns, joined other conservative Texans in signing an open letter supporting congressional action to increase gun restrictions in response to the mass shooting in Uvalde that left 19 children and two teachers dead last week.
The letter, which is running as a full-page ad in The Dallas Morning News on Sunday, endorses the creation of red-flag laws, expanding background checks and raising the age to purchase a gun to 21. More than 250 self-declared gun enthusiasts signed it.
“Most law enforcement experts believe these measures would make a difference,” the letter reads. “And recent polls of fellow conservatives suggest that there is strong support for such gun-safety measures.”
The letter voices support for Texas’ senior senator, John Cornyn, who has been tapped to lead bipartisan negotiations in Congress on possible gun reform measures.
“We are grateful that our Senator John Cornyn is leading efforts to address the recent tragedies in Uvalde and elsewhere across our great Country,” the letter says. “He’s the right man to lead this bipartisan effort, as he has demonstrated throughout his career.”
In an interview with Politico, Cornyn stressed that he was not interested in “restricting the rights of law-abiding citizens under the Second Amendment,” but said it would be “embarrassing” if Uvalde didn’t spark Congress to reach some sort of bipartisan legislative response.
The letter was paid for by Todd Maclin, a former senior executive at J.P. Morgan Chase who now runs the Dallas-based finance firm Maclin Management. Maclin said he is a conservative gun owner who has been stirred to action by the shooting in Uvalde.
“These events have really motivated me and really gotten under my skin and encouraged me to support the effort that’s underway,” Maclin told The Texas Tribune. “I just felt like I needed to do something, and I also believe that there are reasonable things that can be done.”
He said he is still hearing from more conservative gun owners who are feeling a “great sense of urgency and a great need to support [Cornyn] as he does his best to address these issues.”
Maclin said the group is focusing on federal legislation, which he believes is the best avenue to passing gun safety laws and ensuring they are applied uniformly across the country. He declined to comment on the state response to the shooting or gun legislation, except to say that he hopes any federal plan led by Cornyn and passed with conservative support would be embraced by state governments.
Among the signatories are deep-pocketed Abbott supporters, including billionaires Robert Rowling, whose holding company owns Omni Hotels, and Ray L. Hunt, executive chairman of Hunt Consolidated Inc.
The contents of the letter are in line with policies Abbott and other party leaders, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, have supported in the past — though not the ones they are endorsing now.
After the 2018 school shooting in Santa Fe, outside Houston, Abbott supported “red-flag” laws, which would allow local officials to take someone’s guns away if a judge declares them to be a danger. He later dropped his support for the measure, citing a “coalescence” against it from his own party.
The next year, after back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso and Midland-Odessa, Patrick said he was “willing to take an arrow” from the National Rifle Association and support expanding background checks.
The next time the Legislature met, however, lawmakers instead passed a law that allows Texans to carry a handgun without a license or training.
This time, neither Patrick nor Abbott has expressed any support for tightening gun laws. Instead, they have offered suggestions that have ranged from expanding mental health services and minimizing the entrances to school buildings to doing surprise security checks.
On the federal level, both Cornyn and Sen. Ted Cruz have A+ ratings from the NRA and are top Senate recipients of gun industry donations. But they’ve taken differing tacks in response to the shooting in Uvalde.
Cruz said in the wake of the massacre that passing laws that restrict gun access “doesn’t work. It’s not effective. It doesn’t prevent crime.” But Cornyn has shown a willingness, now and in the past, to support some bipartisan gun legislation.
In the wake of the 2017 Sutherland Springs shooting outside San Antonio, Cornyn worked with Democratic colleagues to improve the background check system to prevent felons and domestic abusers from purchasing firearms.
He also has supported banning “bump stocks,” which allow semi-automatic guns to fire faster, and shepherded into law a bill that funded the screening and treatment of offenders with mental illness.
After last week’s shooting, Cornyn has said he’s “not interested in making a political statement,” but is focused on making “the terrible events that occurred in Uvalde less likely in the future.”
NBC News Dallas-Fort Worth adds, Some Republicans Voice Support for Gun Measures in Full-Page Ad:
The group listed in the ad supports expanding background checks, red flag laws and the consideration of raising the age to buy a gun from 18 to 21. The letter is comprised of Republicans, with well-known names like Maclin and Ray Hunt of Hunt Consolidated.
“The response from like-minded conservatives has been overwhelming,” said Maclin. “We received 250 responses in less than 24 hours, to meet the newspaper deadline. Friends and friends of friends from Texas and beyond. Our list is comprised of those that vote for Republican senators and support their efforts to do more. They believe in Red Flag Rules, Universal Background Checks, and wish to give more consideration to stricter age limits. And even after the newspaper ad, I am receiving many more emails and names of support.”
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SMU political science professor Matthew Wilson views this letter as a signal to Republican elected officials to negotiate on gun measures.
“That is something that Republican elected officials have been fearful of doing in the past because of potential backlash within their own party, so getting this signal from important donors to the party that it’s OK to consider certain limited gun control measures is a really important political sign,” Wilson said.
As for whether Maclin has heard from Cornyn, and what happens from here?
“As a courtesy, I did email him a copy of the advertisement, right before publication. I know he is very busy and totally understand why he has not responded. I believe he has read our message, appreciates our support, so I prefer that he focus on his business at hand! From here, we will continue to build our ranks, and continue to support our Republican Senators as they work to get responsible legislation proposed and passed,” added Maclin.
The only signal to Republican elected officials to negotiate on gun measures I have seen here in Arizona is a rare editorial opinion in The Arizona Republic, which the MAGA/QAnon crazy base of the GQP regularly ignores. No more excuses. Pass a ‘red flag’ law, require universal background checks now:
A few days after the Uvalde, Texas, massacre, Sen. Ted Cruz told the National Rifle Association that “what stops armed bad guys is armed good guys.”
What Cruz didn’t say, but everyone in the room must have already known, is that 19 armed “good guys” stood in the hallway for nearly an hour while a gunman slaughtered 19 children and two teachers. The armed good guy in Buffalo, N.Y., couldn’t shoot through the attacker’s body armor. And the good guys in Laguna Woods, Calif., stopped the gunman with a chair.
In Texas, the armed “good guys” didn’t break into the classroom to stop the bad guy because, according to various reports, the commander at the scene made that call.
There’s no justifiable basis for that decision. None. Investigators must get to the bottom of the inaction of those officers piled up in the hallway and the police chief who directed the operation.
What the massacre tells us – once again – is that weapons like the AR-15 the gunman carried are so deadly they give even trained law-enforcement officers second thoughts.
It also tells us the notion that “what stops armed bad guys is armed good guys” is a false narrative. If weapons alone would make us safe, then America should be the safest country on the planet.
It’s not.
We get it: Some ideas are likely DOA
Yet, America remains paralyzed to legislate the sale and possession of firearms – even after the May 24 Uvalde carnage, one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.
President Biden has appealed to the country’s conscience to “stand up to the gun” industry, because he knows it’s not just up to him to tighten gun laws.
There aren’t many new proposals on the table in the wake of the recent spate of deadly shootings but rather a renewed cacophony of voices calling for the ban of military-style semiautomatic weapons and passage of “red flag” laws to let law-enforcement officers temporarily seize firearms from individuals whom a court deems a danger to themselves or others.
Other proposals include raising the age limit to 21 to buy semiautomatic rifles, banning new high-capacity magazines, creating a new federal firearm offense for gun trafficking and regulating gun storage safety. Many of the proposals are supported by a majority of Americans.
Most of them, however, appear unfeasible in today’s divided Congress, where gridlock, especially in the Senate, is the norm rather than the exception.
Fifty Senate Republicans are united in blocking the Democrats’ agenda, including but not limited to gun control legislation, while the 50 Democrats in that chamber can’t even hold a united front.
That said, Arizona should pass a ‘red flag’ law
That political reality gives us little hope of passing any substantive gun control legislation this year – even while some senators from both parties huddle during the congressional recess to hammer out something that might be acceptable to the majority.
Yet, we can’t give up. Not when kids huddled in classrooms are being slaughtered. Not when people are gunned down buying their groceries or worshipping.
The Arizona Legislature must pass a “red flag” law to end the red carpet access that demented people use to buy guns. And it should do what other states with red-flag laws have failed to do: Ensure that if a judge determines someone is unwell enough not to possess a firearm, that they also are connected with mental-health services to get the help they so clearly need.
Such a law needs appropriate guardrails, so it isn’t misused by exes or others with an ax to grind against someone. But it also needs a societal push to ensure that it is used.
It’s amazing how many people knew how troubled the shooters were in Uvalde and Buffalo and never said anything. That must end.
Congress should expand background checks
Congress also should power past the gridlock to pass universal background checks and ensure that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System has the appropriate resources to process those additional checks quickly and accurately.
The system already receives millions of checks a month, and it’s not uncommon for answers to be delayed for hours, even days – not because those who are applying have anything in their histories, but because the system has so many requests to process.
We know there are cracks that bad actors get through. Let’s find them and seal them and move on to fixing other parts of the gun problem.
Neither red flag laws nor universal background checks would have prevented the Uvalde shooting. But preventing the purchase of semi-automatic rifles to those 21 and older might have been one deterrent.
Congress also should make that change.
Finally, our leaders need to take a hard look at certain semiautomatic rifles used in so many of the mass shootings. We are nowhere close to advocating a ban on such firearms, but it warrants examining what, if anything, could be done to reduce mass carnage from their use. Guns are tools to protect. They’re not playthings to live out some camo-warrior fantasy.
The Second Amendment gives Americans the right to bear arms, but it doesn’t mean that any and all reasonable safeguards represent an unconstitutional infringement.
Let’s be clear. Simply arming good guys to stop armed bad ones didn’t work in Uvalde. We failed those children and all the other victims of gun violence.
Truer words were never spoken with this last line.