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Deep In the Heart of Texas
By lindamuralidharan on 2019-06-14 05:43:21
Before we actually get to Texas I want to use something of an analogy to get to my feelings/opinion on the ultimate theme
here. It is an American cultural phenomenon that numerous media outlets have for decades featured weekly or monthly
features about an unusual event or person that is interesting and way out of the norm. "News of the Weird" comes to mind.
Since "Ripley's Believe it or Not" went out of business some decades back I have not bothered to follow such features. And
then the other day an article from the AP appeared as a news item and described an almost unbelievable rarity. According to
Andrew Selsky of the AP, a woman in Texas died at 99 years of age and willed her body to science. When scientists at the
Oregon Health and Science University began the autopsy, they discovered she had lived all those years (raising five
children, pursuing active pursuits such as swimming, and assisting her husband in the running of a feed store they owned)
with all her organs on the wrong side her body. The exception was her heart which had sprouted some unusual blood
vessels to compensate for having to service the wrongly placed organs. Many of the relatively few folks in the world who
have this condition have pretty severe health issues in their life times. Not this Oregon woman. Her family was saying that
really all that bothered her over time was arthritis. And all too many of us know you don't have to have oddly placed
internal organs to suffer from arthritis. In her younger years, the woman had an hysterectomy during which the surgeon had
intended to remove her appendix but could not find it during surgery. Well...duh...how did she or he know he or she was
looking in the wrong place? The scientists were amazed as no one knew of her condition when she was alive. They have
said this is a very rare anomaly. I presume the general public does not get news about the few others with this condition
because the discovery is not so dramatic as to make the news. In any case, I am glad the condition did not cause the woman
any health or functional problems during her long life. [caption id="attachment_12719" align="alignright" width="600"]
Texas cattle ranch[/caption]
Now for something that may or may not be rare but which leaves me amazed and confused about what to think. News of the
weird, indeed. Recently the Texas legislature set about to fund a new program designed to educate gun owners about the
necessity and the means of keeping guns out of the reach of children. Why would this be a problem....there was indeed a
degree of bipartisanship in the passing of the funding amendment that eventually resulted.....? The message is: you are
entitled to own your lovely gun but we think you will want to store it in such a way that it never causes unintended harm in
the hands of a child. [caption id="attachment_12723" align="alignleft" width="600"]
cbs oe See Asian Influence in El
Paso[/caption] For quite a period of time....beginning with the deaths of so many at a Santa Fe High school by a teen shooter
who easily obtained his murder weapon from his home where his father had kept it, gun safety advocates and some
Democratic law makers have tried a variety of means to get the state to support such an education program. Effort after
effort failed at the opposition of gun rights extremists and the NRA. I use the term "extremist" because I have NRA
supporters and hunters in my family and I know for sure that at least one of them....a father of three and grandfather of
4....has always kept his hunting guns and trap shooting guns in a locked gun safe in the basement of his large suburban
home. I think he would favor the Texas child safe proposal. The other hunters in my extended family also include people
who tend to be Republican, straight arrows, responsible adults and parents. I have not seen the safety measures [caption
id="attachment_12724" align="alignleft" width="550"]
sal 4 pole
Tigua Indian Cultural Center, El
Paso[/caption] they all use for their fire arms but I suspect they are adequate. The facts in the United States indicate that
from 2001 to 2017 1700 children died from accidental gun deaths and 33,000 were injured as reported by AP writer Jim
Vertuno. I remember a law was passed in California making it a felony for a person to leave a gun within reach of a young
child. When a child died in San Jose after finding his grandfather's gun, the grandfather was prosecuted. I don't know the
outcome ... it has been about 20 years....and I don't know if other prosecutions have been carried out in that state. What I
find here is the news of the weird. That so many people would put their love of guns ahead of the lives of children. And,
yes, I have written an entire blog about the myth that America is a child centered society. It is also a myth that we
universally value each individual human life. [caption id="attachment_12722" align="alignleft" width="600"]
: (| Mexican American Cultural
Center in El Paso, TX{/eaption] It is also amazing that after so many failures to get the funding for the safety program, the
legislature finally went against the NRA and others and put the funding in an omnibus spending bill. But then there was no
guarantee that Governor Greg Abbot would sign it. He has line item veto power for this legislation. He has contributed to
increased gun sales by supporting NRA positions on many proposals. He denied the "red flag" law whereby guns could be
temporarily removed from a home of the gun owner if he or she was reported by family and friends to be volatile and prone
to unpredictable outburst or threats of violence. At one point even a proposal to have police departments conduct the gun
storage education program was shot down. Never mind that police departments conduct safety campaigns all the time:
traffic safety, pedestrian safety, car theft prevention, and etc. [caption id="attachment_12721" align=alignright”
pat
width="600"]— sh: 4 George W. Bush
at his Texas ranch{/caption Governor ‘Abbot promoted the new law permitting people to publicly carry guns for a week after
a natural disaster. Whoa, what could go wrong? Oh, yeah, a 19 year old goes to the rubble of his elderly grandparents home
to see if he can retrieve anything of value. Roaming vigilante with gun mistakes young man for a vandal and shoots him
dead. And even otherwise it is so unnecessary. Just good for the profits of folks who make and sell guns. [caption
—— =
—
\ “~~
id="attachment_12720" align="alignright" width="326"] fe campus of
University of Texas, Austin[/caption] Looking for a heart in Texas becomes v very hard in the face of this effort to prevent
people from being trained and educated to take better care of their own guns. And Texas is a state of great variety in
addition to numerous Republican voters....many respected academic institutions (never mind the ones that cover up sexual
abuse scandals), many Asian Americans and Asian immigrants, full ranks of white voters, a large Hispanic community.
Some people all along wanted this program and at the last minute even Republican legislators stood up to the NRA and their
advocates. So somewhere amidst gun advocates many concessions made by Texas officials and despite the resistance of so
many to simply educate folks about safety measures with relationship to privately owned guns, a tiny "heart" does beat in
Texas, however faint. I could not find....my skills perhaps being limited...whether or not Governor Abbott ever did sign the
bill funding the safety education inititive. I don't know if he vetoed it or not. Anyway, the legislature is gone for this year
and won't return until its next session in 2021.
