Sunday, Dec. 15, 2019 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
As Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo stood before news cameras last week and demanded action from Republican lawmakers on gun safety legislation, he was the embodiment of the police mission to protect and serve the public.
In blunt remarks that were directly on point, Acevedo blistered the GOP for sacrificing the safety of Americans — including law enforcement officers — out of deference to the gun lobby. As he spoke, his department was preparing to escort one of its own, Sgt. Chris Brewster, to a funeral home after Brewster was shot and killed in the line of duty.
“I don’t want to hear about how much they support law enforcement,” Acevedo said. “I don’t want to hear about how much they care about lives and the sanctity of lives, yet we all know in law enforcement that one of the biggest reasons that the Senate and Mitch McConnell and (Texas Sens.) John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and others are not getting into a room and having a conference committee with the House and getting the Violence Against Women Act (passed) is because the NRA doesn’t like the fact that we want to take firearms out of the hands of boyfriends that abuse their girlfriends.
“And who killed our sergeant? A boyfriend abusing his girlfriend. So you’re either here for women and children and our daughters and our sisters and our aunts, or you’re here for the (National Rifle Association).”
It can’t be summed up more correctly than that.
The cowardice displayed by McConnell and other congressional Republicans in the face of the NRA has left untold numbers of Americans dead or wounded by firearms. They include dozens of law enforcement officers shot and killed annually — 45 this year and 52 in 2018, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page.
As far as the Violence Against Women Act goes, the Democrat-controlled House voted in April to reauthorize it but it’s failed to clear the Senate. There, it met resistance from — of course — Republicans over such provisions as inclusions of protections for transgender individuals and a ban on weapons purchases by people convicted of some types of misdemeanors.
The VAWA is technically still being funded, but its long-term prospects remain uncertain. If it fails to be reauthorized, it will be the latest in a long list of black marks for the GOP on gun safety.
This is the party that rejected expanded background checks, efforts to restrict sales of civilian versions of battlefield weapons, sensible measures to ban high-capacity magazines and silencers, and much more legislation that would have protected Americans.
The result is a nation glutted with firearms — more than 300 million, by some estimates — and suffering from appallingly lax gun safety policies.
That’s great for the NRA, which despite all of its cheerleading about the Second Amendment actually exists to pump up the profits of the industry for which it lobbies. But it’s catastrophic for Americans, who now live in a terrifying age of daily violence punctuated by mass shootings.
Like every law enforcement officer, Acevedo has to deal daily with the consequences of the GOP’s dereliction of duty. As he showed last week, he’s justifiably fed up.
“I don’t want to see their little smug faces talking about how much they care about law enforcement when I’m burying a sergeant because they don’t want to piss off the NRA,” he said. “Make up your minds: Whose side are you on? Gun manufacturers, the gun lobby, or the children that are getting gunned down in this country every single day?”
That choice should be clear. It’s commendable for someone of Acevedo’s stature to challenge Republican lawmakers to answer the question.
Here’s hoping other law enforcement authorities follow his lead.
Officers tend not to publicly discuss politically sensitive issues — and with good reason, as it can lead to questions about whether they can fairly treat citizens who might not share their opinions — but gun safety isn’t a red-vs.-blue matter. Or at least it shouldn’t be.
Acevedo offered excellent leadership on that point too.
“You’re not a Republican, you’re not a Democrat, you’re not a conservative, you’re not a liberal, you’re not a progressive; you are an American. And American blood is being shed every day in this community throughout this nation,” Acevedo said. “Do something about it or retire.”
Well said. But while Acevedo was being diplomatic, let’s be clear about who needs to hear the message the most. That would be congressional Republicans, who should indeed address the issue or get out of public service. Unlike Acevedo, they’re neither protecting the public nor serving its best interests.
