Gun Control After Texas School Massacre: How Washington Is Responding

OLYMPIA, WA — The Texas school massacre has renewed calls in Washington and across the country for bans on assault weapons similar to the one a gunman used last week to kill 19 children and two teachers.

President Joe Biden met a crowd chanting “do something” when he and first lady Jill Biden visited Uvalde, the scene of the 27th school shooting of 2022, and he responded, “We will,” but his power is limited without the cooperation of Congress.

That comes as an informal survey of the nation’s governors by The Associated Press showed wide divergence on whether gun control or hardened school security is the best approach. Washington, for its part, has landed firmly in the camp of supporting greater gun control. As news of the mass shooting broke, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee publically called on Congress to pass stronger gun control legislation.

"We must strengthen laws around gun violence to save lives," Inslee said. "The public and our children are paying the price of the gun lobby's cynical interests."

The governor also highlighted a few things Washington has already done to prevent gun violence, like implementing universal background checks, passing laws holding gun owners accountable if they do not safely store their weapons, and a recent ban on high capacity magazines. That ban cleared the Washington legislature just this February, banning the sale of gun magazines with a capacity for more than 10 rounds. Washington is one of just 10 states that have banned high capacity magazines.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who formally requested the high-capacity magazine ban, promised to "continue to advocate for common-sense gun safety to protect Washingtonians.

"A teenager could not have murdered 21 people - 19 of them children - without ready access to firearms," Ferguson said in a statement. " Reportedly, this included an assault weapon and high-capacity magazines, which make mass shootings more deadly."

The AP said the Uvalde school shooting amplified Democratic governors’ call for more gun control, while Republicans who answered emphasized additional school security, including arming teachers. The news organization reached out to governors in all 50 states but heard back from only about half of them, primarily Democrats.

Some Democrats also favor specially trained school resource officers and hardening school security, but none of them favored arming teachers and staff as a deterrent to school shootings.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers — a Democrat who is a former teacher, school superintendent and state education chief — told the AP he’s concerned arming teachers would make schools more dangerous. He also thinks it’s impractical to post security guards or police at every school building.

“There's not enough people to do it,” Evers told the AP, "and I'm not sure we want to turn our learning institutions into armed camps.”

The schism between Democrat and Republican governors on gun violence prevention mirrors the partisan split in Congress and many state capitols on how to best address a near-record-high number of gun-related deaths in the United States. Those statistics, for 2020 — the latest year for which data is available — also show that firearms were the leading cause of death among children for the first time.

Since 2019, the House of Representatives has twice passed legislation to expand criminal background checks for gun purchases, only to have the bills languish in the Senate amid heavy Republican opposition.

A bipartisan group of senators is meeting this week to come to agreement on how legislation to curb gun violence might look, The Hill reported. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky tasked Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn with negotiating with Democrats on the response to mass shootings. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut is the lead negotiator for Democrats.

Biden said Monday he was optimistic Cornyn may be able to bring the two parties to some agreement, calling him a “rational” policymaker.

“I think Sen. McConnell is a rational Republican. I think Cornyn is as well. I think there’s a recognition in their party that they — we can’t continue like this,” Biden said, referring to mass shootings at schools and other public places.

The bipartisan group includes Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, and Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

There are signs that some Republicans are warming to the idea of a ban on assault weapons, among them Congressman Chris Jacobs of New York, who said he supports ban on assault weapons, the type of gun used in the Buffalo supermarketing shooting, where 10 people were gunned down on May 14.

Jacobs, who was endorsed by the National Rifle Association in 2020, said at a news conference Friday:

“If an assault weapons ban bill came to the floor that would ban something like an AR-15, I would vote for it. So I want to be clear: I would vote for it.”

Jacobs also favors raising the minimum age to buy certain firearms to 21.

“Individuals cannot buy beer, they cannot get cigarettes until 21. I think it’s perfectly reasonable that the age limit at least for these highly lethal, high-capacity semi-automatic weapons should be 21,” he said.

While Biden and others are optimistic that change could be coming, others are less so. Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal tweeted Tuesday that she believed that reform would not be possible without eliminating the filibuster.

"It's the filibuster or gun reform. It's the filibuster or abortion. It's the filibuster or voting rights," Jayapal said. "This shouldn't be a hard decision."

The Associated Press contributed reporting.