Ten years and one day after a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School left 20 children and six adults dead, three members of the Uvalde community, who were impacted by deadly gun violence earlier this year, took their pleas to the members of Congress hoping to sway gun legislation.
During the hearing, called “Examining Uvalde: The Search for Bipartisan Solutions to Gun Violence,” the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security heard emotional testimony from the sister of a 10-year-old girl gunned down in the massacre at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, just six months ago.
The sister of 10-year-old Tess Mata, one of the 21 people killed in the massacre, asked lawmakers: “Are we not tired of hearing stories of victims?”
“She was my purpose for wanting to be successful and better in life. And my purpose left, so now I have to find something else, and it’s hard,” Faith Mata told Spectrum News. “It’s so quiet and she had her pet cat. Her cat sleeps in her room (by himself) now. And so it’s like, you just know, there’s something not right. That puzzle piece isn’t there anymore.”
An Uvalde pediatrician, who cared for the shooting victims, said he is a gun owner and urged lawmakers to reinstitute a long-expired federal ban on military-style semi-automatic rifles.
“They didn’t get buried looking sweet and happy like their photos. Some are missing limbs. Some had holes in their tiny chests,” said Dr. Roy Guerrero at the hearing on Thursday. “You might mistakenly imagine a funeral where a child lives peacefully in a colorful coffin. But make no mistake, there’s no peace and the death of a child by a weapon of war.”
Tess Mata’s mother, Veronica, an educator at another Uvalde school, said the doctor’s testimony dredged up a well of emotion.
“She went instantly and so she wasn’t one of the ones that was brought out. But it’s hard to hear it,” Veronica Mata told Spectrum News. “For these people to sit here and just to kind of ignore that, and to see what this gun is doing to our kids and to our families, like it’s just, it’s not right, and they should be ashamed.”
Republicans and their witnesses on the panel suggested the availability of guns was not to blame. They pointed to how the 18-year-old accused Uvalde school shooter had a troubled background at home.
Jack Brewer, a native Texan who represented the America First Policy Institute, said fatherlessness should be to blame, and suggested discipline and religion are the answer.
“If we are serious about addressing gun violence, then we need to first get serious about bringing the paddle and prayer back to our public schools,” Brewer testified at the hearing.
The GOP’s argument left Democratic state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, in disbelief.
“If this is an issue about absentee fathers, then I don’t have very many hopes at all,” Gutierrez told Spectrum News. “I hope that the people that elect these people are listening to the absurdity that we just heard.”
Gutierrez’s testimony focused on the slow law enforcement response at Robb Elementary School, since it took police 77 minutes to breach the classroom where the shooter was located, and how Texas has made little process on who has access to guns.
“I’ve seen children where their faces blown off. I’ve seen children in piles like kindling. It isn’t right what happened to these kids. And these people can stop it,” said Gutierrez. “This is about choices. These people refuse to make the right choices and Greg Abbott in Texas has refused to make the right choices.”
Gutierrez said while he appreciates how the bipartisan gun safety law recently enacted in Congress restricts domestic abusers from having guns, he will continue to call on state and federal lawmakers to raise the age to purchase semi-automatic rifles.
But with Republicans set to take control of the House in January, the window to enact such measures may be closing.
