San Antonio City Council okays resolution to end gun violence, councilwoman links origins of 2nd amendment to ‘genocide’

SAN ANTONIO (KTSA News) – The San Antonio City Council has unanimously approved a resolution urging Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special legislative session to address gun violence and  “reduce the risk of mass shootings in other Texas communities.” The resolution also calls on the U.S. Senate to begin debate and deliberation on HR 8 and other “meaningful gun safety legislation” that has been approved by the House of Representatives.

“We must refuse to accept bloodshed as an inevitability. For the sake of our children, we must make a commitment here and now to do better,” said Mayor Ron Nirenberg.”We are parents, we are neighbors, we are residents fighting for each other and fighting for our lives and we will not stop and we will act.”

Councilman Clayton Perry joined his colleagues in supporting the resolution, which mentions the 2017 mass shooting that left 26 people dead in Sutherland Springs just east of San Antonio. It also notes that Gov. Greg Abbott’s School and Firearm Safety Action plan described “red flag laws” as a proposal which could have been used to prevent shootings at Sutherland Springs and at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

“I, too, am calling on the state and the federal government to work on this, to come up with solutions to help protect us,” said Perry.

Before the vote was taken Thursday, Councilwoman Jada Andrews-Sullivan talked about visiting gun shows in her East Side district and discovering how easy it is for people to get their hands on high-powered weapons.

“As a military veteran, to see a M16A2 rifle for sale at $120 and you can carry that out the door makes me wonder what our government will allow to pass through the hands of our children,” she said.

State Rep. Roland Gutierrez, who has been calling on the governor to convene a special legislative session on gun control reforms, addressed the city council Thursday.

“We’re not asking for the moon and we’re not asking to take anybody’s guns away,” he said. “What you’re doing here today is important because cities across the state need to go out and tell the governor how important it is, so I really commend you for your leadership.”

Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales read the second amendment and cited Roxanne “Dunbar-Ortiz’s book, “An Indigenous People’s History of the  United States,” in her explanation of  the original purpose of the amendment.

“The original reason for this amendment was because our forefathers, the original white men who created the laws for our country, were supporting genocide and the mass murder of indigenous people in this country,” Gonzales said.   Gun violence is a part of our culture in this country and we have to change that. We don’t have to live by these laws that were created under a very different structure.”

She went on to say,”We have to change what was originally the way our country was designed, and we can do that step by step, city by city.”

Her office later sent a written statement from Gonzales:

Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes in her book “An Indigenous People’s History of the United States” that the founding myth of the United States, which includes the second amendment to the constitution, was in part a policy against indigenous people, designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants.

The recent mass shooting in El Paso brought this to bear in a manifesto left by the confessed shooter – he specifically targeted Hispanics, the very same descendants of the original inhabitants of these lands.