Sen. Roland Gutierrez also recently provided Congressional testimony about gun reform.
TEXAS, USA — Texas State Sen. Roland Gutierrez has been one of the most vocal and consistent critics of the law enforcement response to the Uvalde school massacre since it happened in May.
And he recently testified about those failures before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary.
“When you talk about gun safety, we have to take failure, we have to take human error, system failure into consideration,” Sen. Gutierrez said on Inside Texas Politics. “The fact is, had this young man not had these types of mass assault weapons, this would not have happened.”
The hearing took place during the same week we learned about more deficiencies in law enforcement training in Texas.
A report provided to Uvalde County Commissioners stated that active shooter training is not required for law enforcement officers who aren’t working at a school.
“I’ll be filing a bill here in the next few days, Jason, to require just that, that every certified officer have active shooter training, the most obvious thing,” he told us.
That report also states Texas law does not require an active shooter response policy for law enforcement agencies, something else he’ll try to change legislatively in the upcoming session.
Some family members of the victims and members of the Uvalde community also provided emotional testimony before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary.
The ultimate goal is to find bipartisan solutions to gun violence.
For Gutierrez, that means some level of gun reform.
“I’m going to keep asking for change, whether it’s an assault weapons ban at the federal level, or an age limit in Texas,” the Democrat told us. “We have to be having these conversations because no parent should have to go through what these parents have gone through.”
Republicans on the committee balked at any discussion of gun control, so it’s clear, there is still a long way to go before anything gets done.
But Gutierrez says he’s seen the video from the Uvalde massacre, the bodies mangled from bullets and rooms soaked with blood. And that, he says, informs his actions.
“I’m going to keep having this conversation for as long as I’m in public office,” he said.