State of the Union: Interview With State Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D-TX)
Interview
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Thank you, Jake.
First off, that gentleman that you just had on that footage, he will never be able to take those images from his mind. I -- as you know, I have seen hundreds of hours of bodycam of what happened in Uvalde. And as much as you don't want people to see that in America, what happens, literally, their face is gone.
I have seen two images like that in the Uvalde victims, where little girls faces are just gone, the rest of the children's bodies riddled the damage to -- mangled like you can't believe.
People need to really wake up. I mean, wake up to what's happening here. It's almost become some normal event for everybody. This is happening in your communities, and it can happen anywhere in the United States. And, certainly, it's happening a tremendous in Texas, where Republican leaders have just allowed people to run free with AR- 15s and any gun that they can get their hands on.
It's very sad. Jake, where we're at right now.
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I think that -- that, certainly, families need to be part of that decision, I think.
That said, I had a still photo in my file that I wanted to show to members of the Texas Senate and walk around with it because I was so disgusted in their inability to be able to do anything and have bills on the Senate floor about commonsense gun safety solutions.
And I ended up shredding that photo because I didn't think it was appropriate. I didn't think that I needed -- it wasn't fair to that family whose little girl who had died in such a horrific way. And I had not asked them.
As you know, I signed a nondisclosure agreement, Jake, to not divulge or distribute that information. But, on the Senate floor, I felt that people that should see these images -- and one of those leaders in Texas told me: "Roland, there's a reason we don't show the -- we don't -- we don't look at the bodycam footage."
Jake, I have seen hundreds of hours, and I had to see it because I needed to see police -- the police failure that happened in Uvalde. We were lucky yesterday. Imagine that, nine people dead, and the representative from that area says, oh, the police acted. It could have been worse.
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I don't know how many times I need to hear that. How many times do we need to hear that?
The fact is...
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Well, we don't know the age of this person. We don't -- I have seen images on the Internet that this was an AR-15. I can't confirm that as yet.
That's the other just distinction here in Texas. You look at Tennessee, you look at California, you look at Chicago, you look at every event that has happened over the last year, and we get the information almost immediately. Within the two hours, we are told who the person is, what kind of gun, age, so on and so on.
And, here in Texas, here we are yet again in another incident where we're waiting a day, because I would imagine they're pretty scared to tell us it was an AR-15. We already pretty much know that.
We are in a situation in this state where we're -- as if you're living in communist Russia. The governor, the lieutenant governor, and people like them and their law enforcement agencies refuse to tell us the truth as to what's going on here. It's just a sad state of affairs that we're living in. This is not the Texas miracle that Greg Abbott likes to call it.
We're living in a Texas nightmare, and it's a nightmare that they created. It's a chaos that they created, Jake.
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Thank you, Jake.
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