Gun Laws Need to be Altered to Control Gun Violence

Church Shooting Texas
Walli Carranza discusses the mental health struggles that her former daughter-in-law, Genesse Moreno, dealt with before she opened fire at a megachurch earlier in the week, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024, in Houston. Carranza says she believes that systemic failures as well as lax gun laws ultimately led to Sunday's shooting at the church.
HOUSTON (AP) — The former mother-in-law of the woman who opened fire at a Houston megachurch tried for years to alert authorities and others, including church staff, about her ex-daughter-in-law’s mental health struggles, she said Wednesday. But Walli Carranza said nothing came of her actions.
Carranza said she believes systemic failures as well as lax gun laws ultimately led to Sunday’s shooting at celebrity pastor Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in which Genesse Moreno entered the church with her 7-year-old son and opened fire in a hallway. Two people were wounded in the shooting, including Moreno's son, who was shot in the head. Moreno was gunned down by security officers she exchanged gunfire with.
“You can’t put responsibility on the mind when the mind is so very ill. A healthy mother would never bring her child into a situation like this. That’s not mental health. So sometimes we don’t have to find a guilty party or place blame. We can just say some systems failed,” Carranza told The Associated Press in an interview.
Carranza said her grandson Samuel remained in critical condition, but that he was doing better. Various questions about the shooting remained unanswered on Wednesday, Texas also lacks a so-called “red flag” law, which generally allows law enforcement or family members to ask a judge to order the seizure or surrender of guns from someone who is deemed dangerous, often because of mental health concerns or threats of violence, including Moreno’s motive and details about how she obtained the AR-style rifle she used.