Leading with Empathy: Beto O’Rourke on Gun Violence Policy and Healing in America

Beto O’Rourke has held many political titles but would center each on his identity as a Texan. After serving as an El Paso City Council member, O’Rourke served as the U.S. Representative to Texas’ 16^th Congressional District from 2013 to 2019. O’Rourke ran for the Senate in 2018, for President in 2020, and for the Texas governorship in 2022. He campaigned on many issues including gun violence prevention, arguing for common sense legislation in the wake of the 2019 mass shooting in his hometown, El Paso, and the 2022 massacre in Uvalde. O’Rourke drove record-breaking Democratic turnout in these elections and now leads Powered by People, a Texas-based voting rights and voter registration organization. O’Rourke currently serves as a Winter/Spring 2023 Pritzker Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. In his weekly seminars, O’Rourke discusses voting rights, gun violence, and other issues with students to better understand how to engage young voters in American politics.

The Chicago Policy Review’s Megan Sanders interviewed O’Rourke about gun violence prevention policy in the United States. This article has been edited for readability and length.

CPR: I first want to start with an acknowledgement of the shooting that happened a few weeks ago in El Paso. How are you processing this and how is your community doing?

Beto O’Rourke: On its face, it wasn’t remarkably different than other shootings that happen across this country every day. But because it was a mass shooting right next to the Walmart where 23 people were murdered on August 3, 2019, it affected our entire community, particularly those who lost a loved one in 2019. It brought back the emotions that we felt that day. We likely won’t lose that trauma as a community in our lifetimes. This shooting is a reminder that in the three and a half years since the 2019 slaughter, gun laws in Texas have not changed, except to make it easier to purchase and carry a firearm in public.

CPR: How do you think about the trauma that a community faces after a mass shooting, especially when there’s always another mass shooting to worry about? How do we create policies that are designed to address that?

Beto O’Rourke: I think that’s the most frustrating and depressing dimension of this problem. It seems there is no tragedy significant enough to shock the conscience of the country to do the right thing. It’s little babies in Sandy Hook. It’s kids just a little bit older in Uvalde. It’s folks getting their back-to-school supplies in El Paso. It’s people in churches in Sutherland Springs, in high school in Santa Fe, in a movie theater in Aurora. Though many of us will say that it’s a priority, the country just really doesn’t care. The proof must be in the actions that we take.

I was looking at the history behind the 1934 Firearms Act that effectively outlawed machine guns. A lot of that progress was made possible by the outrage over very sensational public murderers, like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre here in Chicago. That outrage has changed local policies, but it certainly hasn’t changed policies in other states, or nationally. The logical conclusion from that is as bad as all these things have been, they’re not bad enough yet. I can’t even begin to imagine what bad enough really is.

CPR: Recognizing that it takes a while to change legislation, what do we do hyper-locally in the meantime to address the daily trauma from gun violence? Have you seen work in El Paso or Uvalde to address what has happened to the community beyond legislation?

Beto O’Rourke: The parents in Uvalde are a great example. Kimberly Mata-Rubio, Brett Cross, the Cazares family, the Mata family. They know that they’ll never get their kids back, yet they fight for change so nobody else must go through that. I can only imagine how painful it is to relive that trauma. But they’re doing it for all of us, not for themselves. That is deeply inspiring to me. I want to follow their lead on these issues.

CPR: You frequently disrupt the traditional gun violence narrative, as you did during a Town Hall meeting in your 2022 presidential campaign. I saw many young progressive activists resonate with two emotions you expressed as you explicitly told an attendee who was laughing about the Uvalde shooting that it’s “not funny to you.” Those emotions are anger and shame. Does that reflect how you felt in those moments? Why do you think people responded so positively?

Beto O’Rourke: I don’t know that they did. Maybe some people did, and some people didn’t. I don’t understand why everyone isn’t angry about these shootings.

I think being sad is natural. But limiting yourself to sadness requires resigning yourself to this as our permanent future, which many have come to accept. And I just can’t. There are millions of people who are outraged and unwilling to accept the status quo of gun violence policy. It clearly has not worked. We have to try new solutions that are uncomfortable and different to confront those in power who have squandered the opportunity to save lives.

There are people who are doing really important work day-to-day on the ground. It’s hard to prove a negative, but undoubtedly, they have saved lives. We don’t know about those people who weren’t killed by gun violence, who were saved by the work that Arne Duncan has led here at Chicago CRED, or the work that Moms Demand Action has led in changing state laws throughout the country.

CPR: It’s hard to tell the story of gun violence prevention in America using data, largely because of the federal Dickey Amendment that prevents research on gun violence. How are we supposed to lobby for policy change with data when the gun industry behind this amendment prevents us from getting that data?

Beto O’Rourke:  That will require Congress overcoming its fealty to the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby—no small task. But it’s also hard for us to conceptualize the data. Does the fact that 49,000 people lost their lives through gun violence in 2021 move you? It may or may not. I don’t know how someone gets their head around that number.

The stories of those who lost their children in Uvalde engage us emotionally. I listened to Kimberly Mata-Rubio of Uvalde talk about her daughter. Brett Cross, who lost his son, Uziyah, sat in protest in front of the school district headquarters in Uvalde for days. I listened to the story of a mom only able to identify her child by the shoes she was wearing because her body and face were so badly destroyed by this high-impact round fired from an AR-15.

The facts are essential, and we need to do a better job of making sure that everybody is armed with them. But we also need to realize the power of storytelling.  We must center the stories of families all over the country who’ve lost a family member to suicide, or homicide, or accidental gun discharge. They know more about this than anyone else.

CPR: If you had complete control over the narrative around guns in this country, what would you say? It sounds like you would center those stories, but what else might shift?

Beto O’Rourke:  No matter what, you must include everyone in the conversation, even people who are adamant that they should be able to buy an AR-15 and carry guns in public without any background check or restriction on the Second Amendment. I might say, look, there’s no constitutional protection that is unlimited. Antonin Scalia has said the same from the Supreme Court. Reasonable people can disagree on these issues. But that person is still my fellow American—they’re still worthy of being heard.

The only way we’ll make progress is through some consensus. There’s a reason it takes so long to change our practices around guns in this country: it’s uniquely hardwired into our Constitution. There are 330 million Americans and 390 million guns in this country. No other country on the planet that has that ratio of guns to people. Good things would come of in-person, face-to-face conversations about how we change the fate of gun violence in America, so I’m helping people to have these conversations.

CPR: Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, you probably believe that the government’s main job is to keep you safe. I worry that mass shootings strip people of their sense of psychological safety. Many young people disengage because they don’t trust the government to achieve even this. So, to the point of your seminar, where do you think young people can find faith in our government?

Beto O’Rourke: The title of today’s seminar is “What Does Gun Violence Have to Do with Democracy?” As I’ve thought about it, there is first the immediate threat of political violence. This includes armed insurrectionists storming the United States Capitol trying to overturn a legitimately decided election through violence and force. People show up at election events with AR-15s. Armed protesters show up on the steps of state capitols to threaten lawmakers. And, like we saw in El Paso in 2019, there’s political terrorism. That shooter posted a manifesto prior to the slaughter promising to repel the invasion of Hispanics, who were in his words “politically taking over the state of Texas.” So, there’s that threat, which is existential to democracy.

Then there’s the threat that you described, which is more insidious because it weakens people’s faith that democracy works at all. I asked a student here about low voter turnout among young people and he said, “it’s hard to believe good things are going to happen when good things haven’t happened.” If you were a young child when Sandy Hook happened, a little bit older when Parkland happened, Uvalde’s fresh in your in your mind because it hasn’t even been a year, and nothing has been done to prevent the next one, I don’t blame you for feeling frustrated. But the most consequential fights for basic freedoms in American history—the right to vote, civil rights—took generations. We must commit ourselves to that kind of fight.

I don’t pretend that I know how to talk to young people who have opted out of participating in our democracy, because no history lesson is going to do that. I tried my best in the 2022 Texas gubernatorial election by spending time with young people. Texas leads the country in school shootings and there was so much outcry after the Uvalde shooting, yet 75% of eligible young voters didn’t vote. In part, that’s why I’m here at the University of Chicago, because I am really interested in listening to young people.

CPR: Is there a young person who inspires you on this topic?

Beto O’Rourke: Faith Mata, who lost her sister, Tess, in Uvalde. I saw her address the student body months after the massacre. She was so eloquent, inspiring, and strong. To bring those students in, she had to share that trauma and open herself up in a way that must have been profoundly painful to her. I watched the faces of those in the audience. It’s rare that you have everyone’s undivided attention, but of the nearly 600 students there, nobody was looking at their phone or whispering to the person next to them. Everyone was absolutely focused on her. She influenced whatever policy position those people may support and created a sense of urgency and a personal connection that might not have otherwise been there.

I have met and been inspired by many moms, dads, and older sisters in Uvalde who are doing this work, and they are what will ultimately drive change. I don’t think those in elected office now or the next generation of candidates will act on their own volition.  Those who have lived this and lost from it will shape public opinion and galvanize the political will of this country.