Why US gun laws get looser after mass shootings
Vox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB3qNWRaxGE

Transkript (automatisch erstellt)

0:02 It was the last Friday of the school year and I had been actually subbing for a teacher for three days.
0:09 It just seemed like a nice day. On May 18th, 2018, a gunman entered a high school in Santa Fe, Texas and opened fire.
0:19 I look down and I realize in my pants I had bloody holes in my pants and I realized I'm shot.
0:30 The gunman killed ten people. Flo Rice was shot six times.
0:35 And then finally, Scot managed to... he managed to find me. For four years, Flo and Scot have told their story over and over
0:45 to push for new laws that could prevent mass shootings. It’s made them part of a recurring conversation on guns in the US.
0:52 And a cycle the country has seemed stuck in for decades: a mass shooting, a push for reform, and then no action.
1:00 "...the tragic school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas..." "...this time in El Paso..."
1:03 "...nine people killed in Dayton..." "...how many years do we have to go through this?"
1:07 "...Congress is paralyzed..." "...we collectively seem to ask the same question."
1:10 "What does it take to pass some gun reform in this country?" But here’s the thing:
1:14 this cycle of inaction on gun laws isn’t exactly accurate. Over the past few decades, federal legislation on guns has been rare.
1:23 But in state legislatures, mass shootings have led to new gun laws. Thousands of them.
1:30 ...and how those laws have emerged can tell us a lot about the future of guns in the US.
1:42 In 2020, a study tried to determine “the impact of mass shootings on gun policy.” They looked at 25 years of high profile mass shootings.
1:51 Then, they looked at gun legislation passed during that time. Over 3,000 laws across all fifty states.
1:57 When they took a closer look at those laws, a pattern emerged that at first seemed unsurprising.
2:03 State legislatures controlled by Democrats were more likely to pass tighter gun laws. Republican-controlled states typically loosened gun laws.
2:12 But they found a key difference. Mass shootings didn't have any statistically significant effect
2:18 on the number of laws passed by Democrats. While for Republican legislatures
2:23 a mass shooting roughly doubles the number of laws enacted that loosen gun restrictions in the next year.
2:30 To arm more teachers, for example, or arm more school staff. That's James Barragan, a politics reporter at the Texas Tribune.
2:37 There is more access to guns afterwards. A state like Texas would go more towards pro-gun policies
2:45 in the aftermath of a gun shooting. Texas has some of the loosest gun laws in the nation.
2:50 And that matters — for people all over the country. People probably don't know about the importance of state gun laws and really state laws in general.
2:59 Our gun laws at the federal level have been frozen in time since basically the 1990s, which allowed the states to have a much bigger role and a much
3:08 bigger influence in how gun culture played out in their jurisdictions. Let’s look at Texas.
3:14 In 1991, a gunman killed 23 people at a Luby’s restaurant in Killeen, Texas. A woman there named Suzanna Hupp lost both her parents in the shooting.
3:25 She believed she could have stopped the massacre and turned her experience into a crusade for loosening gun laws.
3:32 "I'm mad at my legislators for legislating me out of the right to protect myself and my family."
3:38 It worked. In 1994, Texas elected a new governor: George W Bush
3:44 who made it legal to carry a concealed gun his first year in office and set off a trend in the state that's continued for decades.
3:51 For example in 2012, after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting drew attention to gun laws across the country
3:58 Texas responded a few months later by creating a program allowing some school employees to carry guns in school.
4:06 In 2017, a gunman killed 26 people at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs. Within two years, Texas made it legal to carry weapons in places of worship.
4:19 But after the Santa Fe High School shooting, governor Greg Abbott did something unusual. He asked lawmakers to consider a “red flag law”
4:28 which would allow authorities to take firearms away from a person courts deemed dangerous.
4:33 That is not something that Republicans in this state often do. Flo and Scot were also pushing for legislation in response to Santa Fe
4:42 like laws that would hold parents accountable if their guns were used by their children to harm people.
4:47 They also pushed to make it harder to buy ammunition online. Our shooter, he just checked the box and said, yes, I'm 18.
4:54 And they delivered it to his doorstep. You can't get alcohol delivered without showing proof of I.D. or something.
5:03 But he ordered ammunition. Their hope for stricter laws was in line with Texas public opinion.
5:09 Polling showed only a small minority of Texans supported loosening gun laws and just over half supported tightening them.
5:16 We thought it was common sense that this would be done. They came to Flo's hospital room the week of the shooting.
5:23 And we had the governor, lieutenant governor we had congressmen, we had senators, their wives, the chief of staff
5:29 all in her room at one time, at least 20 people and said, we're going to take care of you.
5:35 We promise we'll be there for you. We'll fix this.
5:39 But in the end, these proposals, along with Abbot’s openness to red flag laws went nowhere.
5:45 After gun rights supporters went after him. The gun culture is strong.
5:49 But the gun lobby itself also exerts a lot of pressure on Texas politicians. There were bills that were put out there, but they never made it out of committee.
5:58 Later in 2019 — two shootings in west Texas just weeks apart prompted Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick to suggest another tighter gun policy — closing background check loopholes.
6:09 That is a very strong comment from a lieutenant governor who is very pro-gun and who is very friendly with the NRA.
6:17 But Republican leaders were saying we may have problems here. Democrats are pushing to take over the state house for the first time since 2003.
6:27 After elections were over, with Republicans still in control in 2021 Texas passed “constitutional carry”: there would no longer be a requirement
6:36 for Texans to have a license or receive any training to openly carry handguns.
6:41 For me, it's very scary because if I see someone in public with a gun, I will panic. That's going to send me into an anxiety attack.
6:49 That constitutional carry law that the state legislature passed in 2021 had been rejected by Republican leaders.
6:57 But as the Republican Party has gone further and further to the right on issues you get a fringe of the party that is much more vocal
7:07 about all kinds of issues, including gun rights. In recent years, a better organized gun control movement
7:14 has seen more success with tightening laws in some states. But the movement to expand gun access isn’t stopping.
7:22 In 2002 fewer than half of the 50 states had one party in control of both the state legislature and the governor’s office.
7:30 Today, three quarters of the states do. That means, in the places where Republicans or Democrats have full control
7:37 they can push through new gun laws with little chance of a veto. What happens and you see it in state house to state house
7:45 is one state passes a law that is very successful for one side of the aisle. And then another state house adopts a very, very similar law.
7:54 Remember that constitutional carry law in Texas? Today, 24 states have similar laws on the books for that, too.
8:01 And more than 400 local governments across 20 states have adopted variations on a “second amendment sanctuary law”
8:09 meaning a city, town, or county refuses to recognize any state or federal gun laws
8:14 that they believe violate the Second Amendment. These things get replicated. They get cloned, they go from state to state
8:20 and they essentially make up this patchwork of laws throughout the country. In June 2022, in the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting in Texas
8:30 President Biden signed the most significant federal gun bill in 30 years. One thing it does is incentivize states to pass red flag laws.
8:41 But it can’t make them do it. That power still belongs to the states.
8:48 I have survivor's guilt because I'm alive. And so I feel like I have to keep speaking out. I have to do what I can.
8:56 There's times when I just think I'm going to stop. I cannot do this for my own mental health.
9:03 But we just keep, we keep going.