Following yet another school shooting, this time at Santa Fe High School in Texas, people are calling for lawmakers to create more restrictive gun laws. In particular, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo is urging the nation’s leaders to speak out against gun violence.
In a Facebook post from Friday, as the New York Times noted, Chief Acevedo demands change to gun policy from lawmakers and expresses his despondence over the violence that occurred.
“I have never accepted the status-quo in anything I do and I’ve never accepted defeat. And I won’t do it now. I will continue to speak up and will stand up for what my heart and my God commands me to do, and I assure you he hasn’t instructed me to believe that gun-rights are bestowed by him,” he said.
On May 20, Acevedo appeared on CBSN to further clarify his comments on the need for changes in gun policy, asking people to vote out those who are standing by while more children are needlessly killed in mass shootings.
“We’ve got to make sure that everyone stores [guns] in a responsible manner, and that there are significant penalties when they fail to do so and people die as a result”
➡️ @ArtAcevedo appeared today on @FaceTheNation https://t.co/yo6Sw3lKAR pic.twitter.com/42ETFspMoy
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) May 20, 2018
“I think that the American people, gun owners, the vast majority of which are pragmatic and actually support gun sense and gun reform in terms of keeping guns in the right hands. We need to start using the ballot box and ballot initiatives to take the matters out of the hands of people that are doing nothing that are elected into the hands of the people to see that the will of the people in this country is actually carried out,” he said.
Chief Acevedo comments follow the recent shooting at Santa Fe High School on Friday, which left 10 people dead.