Guns, Latinos and the 2024 Election
Latino USA
Futuro Media and PRX
4.9 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 August 2024
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Gun violence is a top voting issue for Latinos and Latinas this election cycle. So to explore how Latines are thinking about the topic, we traveled to Texas. The Lone Star State has more registered guns than any other state in the country, and it’s also home to some of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history — many of them directly targeting Latinos and Latinas.
On this episode of Latino USA, producer Reynaldo Leaños Jr. travels to El Paso, Texas to speak with Latinx activists and gun owners about gun reform and safety ahead of the November presidential election. Maria Hinojosa returns to Uvalde, Texas to catch up with a survivor of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary and see how the community has been mobilizing around gun reform.
This story is part of our ongoing political coverage “The Latino Factor: How We Vote."
You can read more about the episode here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So we're right outside the Walmart where the shooting happened on August 3rd in 2019. |
| 0:16.0 | This is Jesus Leonardo Salgado Ramos. |
| 0:20.0 | This is always a place that has a very deep meaning that has very awful memories. |
| 0:27.0 | In August 2019 when he was 16 years old an armed gunman traveled hundreds of miles across Texas to his |
| 0:36.1 | suces' hometown of El Paso. The gunman had one aim to kill Latinos, because he believed there was an invasion on the border. |
| 0:46.3 | That day August 3rd five years ago the gunman walked into this Walmart and murdered 23 people with a semi-automatic rifle. |
| 0:57.0 | I think for many of us that saw the graphic images, your mind just starts thinking about where so and so could have been laid. |
| 1:05.8 | This used to be hissous's local grocery store. He has never returned here until today. You feel like that day when we were all getting those |
| 1:16.0 | views and we all felt uneasy and we felt like we had to watch our backs or even just |
| 1:20.8 | the vague memory of it all played now, I think is very difficult for us to process. |
| 1:25.7 | Hissus didn't personally know anyone who was killed or hurt during the mass shooting, |
| 1:30.4 | but as a member of the community, tragedy had a lingering impact on him. |
| 1:35.0 | They reopened and they renovated everything in the Walmart after the shooting and |
| 1:40.0 | they built this memorial for the victims. |
| 1:44.0 | We're staring at the plaque that has the name of the 23 people |
| 1:47.3 | who were killed at the Walmart. |
| 1:49.2 | The majority of them were Latino. |
| 1:51.5 | It has the names of Arturo Benavides who is described as an |
| 1:55.2 | amazing grandfather. It has the names of the Anchondos, parents who died |
| 2:01.8 | protecting their children. |
| 2:04.0 | Near the plaque, there's a 30 foot tall monument dedicated to the victims. |
| 2:09.0 | Its cylinder, sand-colored, and it shoots up into the sky. |
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