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uvalde
In Honor of Uvalde, Let Us Reimagine the Texas Two Step as the Texas Peace Step
We, as men, need to follow women’s lead onto the dance floor of change and use our identity to advance life-saving gun control measures.
May 24, 2023
One year after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, officials are still ducking and weaving; still doing little to curb easy access to guns throughout the state.
The Texas Two-Step, a once-scandalous waltz performed throughout the Lone Star state, was recognized as a fancy Bohemian dance called a redowa, a Czech word meaning to steer or whirl around. Apparently, steering and whirling around was what police officers in Uvalde were doing for 77 minutes on the grounds of Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022.
Whatever whirling around police may have been doing outside, when the siege inside was over two teachers and 19 children lay dead on their classroom floor. No Texas Two-Step for them. Ever.
Too many guys—wrongly stereotyped as having two left feet—nevertheless too often stand flatfooted on the sidelines while women are at the forefront of actions aimed at preventing gun violence.
If you’re sensing anger—think of fictional Howard Beale in Network shouting, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore”—I hope you also can sense my eyes welling up with tears. Tears for the dead children, teachers, and their families in Uvalde—no Memorial Day barbecues for them—and tears, too, for their 2023 counterparts in Allen and Cleveland, suburbs of Dallas and Houston, and in every other city and town in the U.S. where explosive AR-15 firepower keeps breaking the psychic sound barrier—and the hearts—of people from Louisville, Kentucky, to Nashville, Tennessee; Dadeville, Alabama to Farmington, New Mexico. (Listing all the communities where mass shootings have happened so far in 2023 would have left no room to write anything else. Maybe that’s the point.)
To bring an end to the NRA’s ballets of death in schools, malls, banks, houses of worship, supermarkets, movie theaters, night clubs, and music festivals (have I missed anywhere?), we’ll need to design a dance for life, snaking our way through the streets of every village, town, city, and state, and in Washington, D.C. We’ll need a sustained citizens’ flash mob uprising in every city hall lobby and every state capitol rotunda.
In their call for stricter gun control laws, Tennessee state representatives Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, and Rep. Gloria Johnson, have been at the forefront of a sustained citizens’ campaign that did show up in the state capitol in Nashville. And, with a Tennessean peace force of thousands behind them, Gov. Bill Lee finally pledged to call the legislature back into session in July to pass new gun safety laws. As of this writing, he’s failed to keep that promise.
What would it look like to reimagine the Texas Two-Step “steering and whirling around” in a nonviolent national dance? What role could men play in steering society to safety? Too many guys—wrongly stereotyped as having two left feet—nevertheless too often stand flatfooted on the sidelines while women are at the forefront of actions aimed at preventing gun violence. While men may not be known for dancing, we do know how to march.
So, men—as men—this is a pivotal moment. We need to follow women’s lead onto the dance floor of change. We need to use our identity as men to advance life-saving gun control measures. Father’s Day is just around the corner. It’s an apt moment to leverage our role—if not as a dad, then as a coach, mentor, uncle, or grandfather—to lead our sons and nephews on a march for peace.
With mass shootings a weekly occurrence, we cannot overlook who the murderers are—almost exclusively white men. Right-wing guns-über-alles proponents always focus on the mental health of the (primarily white, male) shooter. They never want to talk about either his gender or the direct link between the social policies they embrace and the loneliness and alienation many disaffected men experience.
Until or unless we acknowledge their plight and begin to socialize boys based on a model of manhood that cultivates compassion, empathy, and cooperation over competitiveness, enmity, and condemnation, we will miss a golden opportunity to choreograph a new direction for society. Maybe there will never be a swing dance called the Texas Peace Step, but imagining it is the least we can do to honor the memories of those murdered in Uvalde, and all the other victims and survivors of American gun violence.
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'Our Blood, Your Hands': Students Stage National Walkout to Demand Gun Control
"We're determined to be the last school shooting generation," asserted protest organizer Students Demand Action.
Apr 05, 2023
Students across the United States walked out of their classrooms Wednesday to take part in a nationwide protest demanding gun control legislation amid relentless shootings that have already claimed more than 10,000 lives in a little over three months this year.
Wednesday's National School Walkout followed a smaller demonstration Monday in Nashville, Tennessee, where six people including three 9-year-old children were shot dead last week at the Covenant School.
"We've grown up in the midst of America's gun violence crisis. In fact, we've been called the 'school shooting generation,'" protest organizer Students Demand Action explained. "Now we're rising up and organizing in our high schools, colleges, and communities across the country to demand action to end gun violence."
\u201cWe\u2019re determined to be the last school shooting generation. \n\nRight now, thousands of students nationwide are walking out of class to demand action from our lawmakers and gun makers on gun violence. We need ACTION, not hollow thoughts and prayers.\u201d— Students Demand Action (@Students Demand Action) 1680712703
Among those participating in Wednesday's walkout were a group of students from Uvalde High School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and three adults including the shooter were killed during a May 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School.
The teens chanted slogans including "our blood, your hands" as they walked off campus and marched downtown.
\u201cA group of Uvalde High School students walked out of school at noon today to participate in a National walkout against gun violence. #Uvalde\u201d— Sam Owens (@Sam Owens) 1680718257
"If people do not start walking out, do not try to start making change, nothing will, and we want change," one student told the San Antonio Express-News. "We're tired of being scared."
Javier Casares, whose 9-year-old daughter Jackie was murdered at Robb Elementary School, told the Express-News he thinks Wednesday's walkout was "something awesome."
"I think we should be seeing this here all over the world," he said, "and I wish more students would have the courage to do so."
\u201cAll across the country, students walked out of their classrooms today in protest after the school shooting in Nashville. They're scared to go to school for fear of another shooting.\n\nOur children deserve a safe learning space\u2014and lawmakers who listen.\u201d— GIFFORDS (@GIFFORDS) 1680729984
In New York City, one student protester said that "it's unfair for little kids to be paranoid all the time coming to school when school's supposed to be... a safe space for you to learn."
Another New York demonstrator said that "it's not fair how people are banning some books and not guns."
In Memphis, Tennessee, students shouted "no more silence, no more gun violence" as they rallied outside White Station High School.
\u201c\u201cWe cannot have academics if we are not safe,\u201d says 12th grader Presley Spiller, an organizer of the walkout at White Station High School.\u201d— MLK50: Justice Through Journalism (@MLK50: Justice Through Journalism) 1680714484
"We have to stand up. We have to change the legislation. We have to have safety," said White Station 12th grader Presley Spiller, an organizer of the rally. "We cannot have academics if we are not safe."
In Boulder, Colorado—where a gunman armed with an AR-15 rifle massacred 10 people in a supermarket in 2021—students rallied outside of the county courthouse and chanted, "Hey, hey, NRA, how many kids did you kill today?"
"We don't want to be killed. We don't want to be a face in the newspaper," Boulder High School sophomore Alex Berk toldThe Denver Post.
\u201cStudents at Boulder High School are participating in a state and national walkout today to raise awareness for gun violence. Here they are in front of the Boulder County Courthouse @dailycamera\u201d— Olivia Doak (@Olivia Doak) 1680720407
Eliana Monahan, another Boulder sophomore, told the paper that "we shouldn't be afraid to go to school and get killed."
"We had a scare a few months ago where we thought there was going to be a school shooting," Monahan added, "and that shouldn't be a fear that we have, that our friends and teachers are gonna get shot."
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'Noah's Wounds Were Not Survivable': Parents Allow Detailed View of AR-15 Carnage
The Washington Post exposé has been described as "the most powerful article you will read this week" and "one of the most important pieces of journalism ever produced."
Mar 28, 2023
On Monday morning, The Washington Postpublished a series of 3D animations to show "how bullets from an AR-15 blow the body apart."
A few hours later, a 28-year-old shooter armed with two assault rifles and a handgun killed six people at a private Christian school in Nashville.
In the wake of that massacre—the 129th mass shooting in the United States in 2023—the Post's exposé has received sustained attention, with one person calling it "the most powerful article you will read this week" and another characterizing it as "one of the most important pieces of journalism ever produced."
Noting that the lethal wounds caused by AR-15s "are rarely seen" by the public, the newspaper demonstrated "the trajectory of two different hypothetical gunshots to the chest—one from an AR-15 and another from a typical handgun—to explain the greater severity of the damage caused by the AR-15."
Then, after obtaining permission from the parents of two school shooting victims, a team of visual reporters created 3D models to depict how bullets fired from "many mass killers' weapon of choice" obliterated their children's bodies.
Noah Ponzer was one of the 26 people who were killed by an AR-15-wielding gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012. The 6-year-old was shot three times.
"Noah's wounds were not survivable," the Post reported, citing 2019 court testimony from Wayne Carver, who was the state's chief medical examiner at the time.
Peter Wang was one of 17 people murdered when an attacker armed with an AR-15 opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018. The 15-year-old was shot 13 times.
As the Post reported: "The combined energy of those bullets created exit wounds so 'gaping' that the autopsy described his head as 'deformed.' Blood and brain splatter were found on his upper body and the walls. That degree of destruction, according to medical experts, is possible only with a high-velocity weapon."
"This is the trauma witnessed by first responders—but rarely, if ever, seen by the public or the policymakers who write gun laws," the newspaper noted.
Instead, many GOP lawmakers glorify assault rifles, including U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), whose congressional district is home to the Nashville school where Monday's deadly shooting took place.
Another right-wing member of Tennessee's congressional delegation—Republican Rep. Tim Burchett—baldly stated that "we're not gonna fix it" just hours after the shooting.
There are more guns than people in the United States. Due to National Rifle Association-bankrolled Republicans' opposition to meaningful gun safety laws—bolstered by a 2022 ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court's reactionary majority—it is relatively easy for people to purchase firearms in many states.
Two years ago, Tennessee became one of several states that allow most adults to carry handguns without a permit.
There have been thousands of mass shootings since Noah and more than two dozen other individuals suffered gruesome deaths at Sandy Hook, including last year's slaughter at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, among hundreds of others. Research shows that U.S. states with weaker gun control laws and higher rates of gun ownership have higher rates of mass shootings.
Research also shows that gun regulations with high levels of public support, including bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, help reduce the number and severity of fatal mass shootings.
Guns recently became the leading cause of death among children and teens in the United States. A study published last year found that roughly 26,000 kids could still be alive today if the U.S. had the same gun mortality rate as Canada.
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