In response to the El Paso mass shooting, Texas Governor Greg Abbott created the Texas Safety Commission. The first meeting of the Commission took place this morning.
The disturbing aspect of the Commission is who it includes…and who it doesn’t. When Abbott first listed the initial participants there were no representative of the gun rights community among the distinguished participants.
There was, however, a representative of the gun control group, Texas Gun Sense. Abbott also included prominent Big Tech firms, namely Twitter, Facebook, and two individuals from Google. These are corporations that have de-funded, de-platformed and banned gun-related publications, retailers and manufacturers in recent years.
It wasn’t until Texas’s gun rights organizations raised holy hell that a member of the Texas State Rifle Association was added to the list of attendees (there’s apparently no truth the rumor that he was force to sit at the back of the room).
In response to these disturbing developments, Gun Owners of America’s Texas Director, Rachel Malone, scheduled a rally outside the Capitol building this morning to let gun owners know that gun rights and Second Amendment freedoms may not be top of mind when the Commission does its work.
Also speaking to the crowd of about 100 people who gathered in Austin was Stephen Willeford, the hero of Sutherland Springs who used an AR-15 rifle to stop and hunt down the man who murdered 26 people and wounded 20 more in a church there in November of 2017.
Note: at about the 18:40 mark an individual in the crowd began objecting to Willeford’s message and debated him for about five minutes. It’s worth your time to view to that portion of the video.
Following are some images from the rally.
(WARNING: the last two images below are NSFW).
