April 20, 2021 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] Welcome to the 2nd Reading Podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party, so I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution, they have become the norm at what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room? Yeah. And Welcome Back to the Second Reading Podcast for the Week of April 19 2021. I’m Jim Henson, director of the texas politics Project at the University of texas at Austin, joined again by dr Joshua blank. Research director for the same texas politics project. Welcome back josh! Thanks for having me. Well, it’s a pleasure to have you here. Well, it’s a pleasure to be here. Um Here, this is the week of April 19 that we’re actually recording on April 20, commonly called 4 20 mm hmm. Birthday. I’m just, I’m just leaving it there. I’m just leaving that there. No, I’ll just say something about it. It’s my older brother’s birthday. Yeah. Who I will just say is an unlikely person to have for 20 as a birthday. It’s also Evan smith’s birthday. Oh, I remember that now. That’s remember that guy. Evan Evan smith, What is he doing these days? You know, you know, I don’t know, I don’t know, staying at home a lot. I think it’s actually going out for his birthday. I hear um undisclosed location, undiscovered. An undisclosed sterilized location. A bubble somewhere in a bubble, somewhere. Happy birthday. Haven’t even though the chances of you hearing this are, wait, let me think. Zero. Uh well, I know. I’m not sure. He’s less likely to listen to this. My stepbrother or Evan smith, Why don’t you have to assume kevin smith has a, has a google search for his name or something. Right. So if we put it in the description, he might, he might listen to how you’re going now. You’re talking abut on Evan smith’s birthday in a podcast celebrating of smith’s birthday, Jim and josh discussed what we’re going to discuss, which are, you know, the, uh, guns and police. So, uh, let’s just get right to it enough tomfoolery. That’s two minutes of tomfoolery. Um, not that I’m watching the clock. So, uh, you know, in this, in this young week, much of the news that we’re seeing, at least in in texas politics or at least one of the big stories amidst a lot going on, I guess it’s fair to say, eyes, the, the response to the house passed bill last week that will, you know, essentially allow concealed unlicensed carry of handguns. So, you know, this has gone by a number of different shorthand. I don’t know if somebody message tested or whatever, they kind of stopped calling it a constitutional carry, I think universally, But ultimately we’re talking about House Bill 1927, which, you know, had some has some ins and outs to it, which, you know, we can, we can talk about if necessary. But basically is the unlicensed carry bill that, that the, you know, the hard core of Second Amendment rights slash gun rights activists have been pushing for a long time and until very recently was seen. You know, frankly, I think it’s kind of a stretch. And yet there there was moving, you know, with, with some speed through the House and passed on the floor after a lengthy, but really never in doubt debate. Uh, last friday, as we’re recording here on the following Tuesday. Uh, then more news as you know, lieutenant governor dan Patrick, you know, fairly quickly said that he didn’t have, he didn’t think the votes were there to pass it in the senate. He’s elaborated on that saying that if the votes were there, he’d bring it to the floor and would be more than happy to send it to the governor. Um, but made a lot of news, you know, bye bye, sort of following up on what some reporters had, you know, had reported with skepticism based on his kind of gray area track record on expanding gun rights. There was a, my jeremy Wallace was kind of the first one that was all over this in print or in digital print on friday with a piece of the Houston Chronicle. Patrick’s Vitek followed up, I guess sunday or monday with a quote from Patrick, um, sort of enunciating, you know, this the position I just described, I think, and I think I described it fairly. Um you know, you know, I’m sorry, you know, how how real do you consider this grey area that that people attribute to Patrick? And and I’m not I’m not questioning the reporting on this, but you know, talk a little bit about why people think that and I’m wondering, you know, how seriously you take that? Well, I guess partially, let me just ask you first, what do you mean by gray? Gray area in the sense of this idea that he’s not sure about, you know, whether he has the votes to pass it? That gray area? No, let’s let’s table that gray area just until the next. Actually, I don’t want to say table it because that means we’re not going to talk about it. Let’s um let’s just wait on that. I’m like, we’re gonna we’re gonna we’re gonna recess, we’re gonna recess on that. We’re gonna we’re gonna recess until april 20th in about 10 minutes at 1 50 because I know the rules. Um, So which gray area are you talking about? Well, I’m talking about the, you know, the fact that, you know, in, you know, lieutenant governor, you know, Patrick had been, you know, sworn in his lieutenant governor, you know, less than a week, I think when he got in trouble, you know, with the gun with gun rights folks for saying he didn’t think the votes were there for open carry in 2015, basically saying more or less the same thing about open. He said, yeah, he said the same thing again a couple of years later, once again earning, you know, some degree of, you know, at least carping, if not material pushback from, you know, the gun wing, well loosely call the gun wing of his party and will qualify that a lot in a minute. Um, and then after the el paso shooting, he, you know, got a lot of media coverage for saying that he, I thought that, you know, extending closing some of the loopholes on background checks was a reasonable approach and that, you know, he wouldn’t be opposed to that. Now, none of that has happened. I mean, you know, that certainly that we’re actually, we’re going the opposite direction. That thing certainly didn’t happen. And and the lieutenant governor had some mild or you know, uh, fodder for the, that’s a little unfair, but not really for the, for the Second amendment crowd on his, you know, 31 flavors priorities for this session that had to do with that. I think he, I think that you can correct me if I’m wrong. I think the Senate was one that had the allowing guns in hotel rooms bill that has, has moved through the Senate. But there has always been, you know, I mean, but the, you know, the spin right now is, you know, because of ties with the very, you know, with powerful and influential police groups and perhaps the politics of policing that the lieutenant governor has been, there’s a phrase you almost never use has been slightly to the left of where Second Amendment rights advocates are. Yeah, yeah. I think that’s what I’m talking about. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, there’s sort of an interesting thing in all of this in terms of, you know, think about it. And then I asked because, I mean, there’s a lot of sort of gray areas in this, I suppose, right. I mean, on the one hand, You know, to the extent that Patrick got blow back in 2015 for questioning. You know, the appetite for open carry uh, you know, in the Senate, I think, you know, looking back on that some of the surprising that was because in some ways of how seemingly off brand it was for Patrick Wright, who had kind of entered the office, basically looking to be really place himself as the most conservative, you know, maybe elected official in texas, maybe in texas history. I don’t know that. Well, you know, texas history is tough because of those segregationist democrats, but modern texas history, let’s yeah, let’s say. And had, you know, had already established himself as a senator, as, you know, the kind of right wing ballast in the in the Senate at the time that he was a member, and David Dewhurst was lieutenant governor, and it ultimately beat Dewhurst. You know, a lot of reasons he, I shouldn’t say beat Dewhurst right now, I guess, um defeated Dewhurst um in a fair election, you know, in a fair, in a fair election in which he campaigned, as, you know, broadly speaking, the real conservative in the race. Right? And the thing was, you know, there was really little attempt in that primary to moderate at all. I mean, you know, there was sort of a jumping all over each other to see how, you know, who could position themselves as the most conservative in a pretty strong field, as I recall. Um But then, you know, so, so, I mean, so I think, you know, that reticence on his part, you know, towards advancing this is sort of, strange. I mean, the other thing, I think is sort of strange this idea that, you know, that the dan Patrick who seems to have, you know, the Senate under pretty extreme tight control would basically say, well, I’m not really sure if the votes are there. No, I don’t think there’s anything. I mean, I think he said the votes aren’t there, to be fair to him, thank you. Yeah, I think in the previous time he said he wasn’t sure. I mean, this point, he’s saying they’re not there. But I mean, even that’s kind of curious to the extent that, you know, Yeah, I mean, I was going to get to that at the end, but I think that’s right. I mean, you know, I mean, the, you know, the myth of dan Pat or you know, in the myth, myths are based in fact, the myth of dan Patrick is that he’s got the Senate under his thumb. So I think what people are thinking as well, if he wanted the votes to be there, they’d be there. Well, that’s certainly what like Allen West is thinking right. I mean, I mean, just just well, but I mean, nobody this is, but this is the tension that he’s facing right is that, you know, this is, you know, part of the miners and this is part of the plank of the Republican Party. You know, you’ve got Allen West out there saying, hey, this should move because you guys all said you were part, you were for this, you know, at one point or another. Um, you know, I think they had one of those, you know, things like, you know, we both, I think hate those little those election items on the, you know, they’re survey items on the Republican primary ballot where you vote for these propositions and I think, right, which I think this was one of those problems, I’m sure 98% of people were for it like they are for everything that’s put on those ballots, you know, um, it’s not really an information gathering exercise per se, but no, but it does, you know, I mean, you know, before we get to kind of the politics of the groups that, you know, that he’s dealing with, I mean, I do wonder, to what extent, you know, this isn’t just the nature of someone developing in the, you know, let’s say, evolving in the position because, you know, he’s in an executive office and we keep having mass shootings in texas and elsewhere. And ultimately, you know, at some point, at some point when it comes time to decide, hey, who’s responsible for, for fixing all of this. You know, I mean, I think there’s a lot of Republicans who are going to be called to account for this, and I think you’re lending credence to the Dan Patrick of October 2019 or September October 2019. When, you know, he, he seemed like, you know, the song, he issued his somber, you know, thought that the background checks maybe might be it might be a good idea. Well, and it’s one of those things too, where I think, you know, I think one of the difficulties in all of this, this whole space, you know, the whole gun control space, and we’ll talk about republican attitudes towards guns in a second. But I think, you know, the the huge distrust, uh, part of basically the other party in the electorate is so palpable right now, that it’s one of those real difficult things where I think, you know, republican elected officials will always say after a mass shooting. This isn’t about guns, this is about people we know from our polling, that the republicans agree with this. You know, we asked them what are the causes of mass shootings? And they say, you know, mental illness is the main cause, democrats say gun control laws, but at the same time, when, you know, something like red flag laws come along, that would specifically address removing guns from people who are, you know, most likely mentally ill and will hurt themselves or someone else. Um, you know, it seems that republicans in texas are only willing to kind of dip their toe in the water and see whether this is okay, and then they decided they seem to have decided that it’s not right. I mean, as we’ve said a bunch of times, and this way, we don’t think that, you know, we have to delusion people with numbers this time. And there’s a we did a blog post uh, earlier this week, that will be on the texas politics website project website, uh, texas politics dot utexas dot e d u in which we went through a bunch of these numbers and kind of, you know, looked at these republican attitudes. But, you know, I mean to put it quickly, you know, in the last time we asked people whether they wanted gun control laws made more strict, less strict or left alone, the modal position among republicans, 43% said they wanted the gun gun control laws left as is. And I think you pointed this out a lot. You know, I mean, that seems reasonable and plausible, given the fact, given where texas gun control laws are, which is they’re already very permissive. And there’s already been a lot of publicity around the passage of open carry and the weakening of the licensing laws to date. And that’s one of those things, You know, I think if you think about, you know, one of the sort of, I guess one of the frustrating things about setting public opinion is how static it is. Most of the time, you know, there’s sort of an assumption amongst people who don’t study public opinion that, you know, Every event that happens is going to shift the electorate like 50 points and that just never happens, which almost never happens. But I would say one of the things that was noticeable and palpable in the last 10 years of polling that we’ve done is that there is a lot more appetite for Republicans for loosening gun control laws in the lead up to open carry than after it. And I think that’s important. I don’t think, I think that was, you know, our colleague at UT christian legend calls us, you know, the thermostat IQ model, right? The electorate wants something, want something, you know, the policy process adjusts and then they say, oh, that’s good, okay. You know, that’s the right temperature. And I think the open carry debate really turn it down anymore. Well, that’s the thing. I think the open carry debate really exposed about where the right temperature was for texas, which was basically to say, you know, you know, we did polling, first of all the, you know, on that in particular, you know, most people like the status quo basically, you know, permitted Concealed carry, you know, you can carry your gun around as long as you have permanent, you keep it concealed. You know, there was more Republican support for permitted open carry. The interesting thing was, and this was in 2015, there was almost no support to be had for permit liss carry, open or closed, 10% of Texans. 12% of republicans wanted this. Most people wanted the status quo or open carry. But then after that, that that past that session, in that passage, we saw that, you know, republican desire for again, loosening gun controls really evaporate in texas. Now, the thing is, that may be the case, and we’ve been talking about this a lot recently, and I keep using the same sort of analogy for it, but it’s really hard for Republican elected officials to go back out to the go go back home to the republican primary electorate and say I went to Austin, I fought the good fight and I made sure they didn’t pass any laws that would make it gun control laws stricter, not good enough. Because, you know what? There’s somebody lining up in the Republican primaries as well. I’ll take it further. And I kind of feel like, I mean, maybe, you know, in a global sense, that’s where we find ourselves with this at this point. You know, we’ve already, you know, we’ve already, I would say this, the conservative legislature, and especially, I think with dan Patrick in charge of the Senate, has already passed a number of conservative bills over the last five or six or eight years that have really expanded gun rights have really taken on, you know, let’s say abortion access, you know, for example, and some of these other hot button issues and the question that because, well, what else do you do? And we’re kind of at the point now where the what else you do is we’ll do you just give everyone a God, you know, is that is that is that where we are now, and we’re talking about gun control laws, right? I mean, I think the, you know, the issue here, and this is kind of, I think what we were getting out in this post, we did monday is that, you know, there’s just enough of a, you know, of a mass of voters that still want to keep going on this within the Republican Party, and they’re very committed there. You know, they tend to be strongly, you know, strong conservatives, it’s not even the most, you know, all of the constraint, extreme conservatives, but you have the sense that the, You know, the 24 of Republicans who wanted gun laws to still to be still less strict in October 2019 are people that pay a lot of attention to this and get engaged and voting Republican primaries? Yeah, it’s definitely an important issue for a small group of people. Right? Exactly. So, you know, I mean, you know, I think there’s some, you know, it’ll be interesting to see the next time we pull on this, which will be soon, um, you know, how much this has moved and whether, you know, you know, whether whether the thermostat has moved or not, put it that way, you know, the setting has moved. Yeah. And I think that 11 major change I think is, you know, is the shift, you know, the White House from donald trump to joe biden. I mean, ultimately, it makes the threats of a Greg Abbott or dan patrick to watch out for joe biden, or better O’Rourke, or whomever, coming to confiscate your guns, seeing that much more real, because you’re not talking about the minority party and the more, you know, political, you know, you kind of alluded to this in a minute, a minute ago. And I think it’s, you know, important, you know, that these notes, the last time we sort of asked about, You know, the results, you were talking about unlicensed carry, it was only 12 supported. That was 2015. A lot of negative partisanship is flowed under the bridge. And, you know, I mean, you know, I don’t know, I don’t know that we could go back. We probably could go back and maybe look if we have data on this. But it does seem to me that I would not be surprised if if any measure we could come up with a negative partisanship has increased. Since then. It’s hard for me to imagine it hasn’t after four years of trump in the White House. Well, that’s right, and it goes back to the whole, you know, so, so what do we think may have, like, you know, do we think that the 10% number has shifted dramatically, you know, in the last six years? And and I think there’s some evidence to say, yeah, maybe maybe republicans are more open to it because there’s a democrat in the White House at the same time, you know, the number and the attention two mass shootings in the state and the country has been pretty relentless, including here in texas. And so you could also argue, you know, maybe there’s even less support, uh, for some of these policies. We just, you know, we don’t know, it’s going to be interesting to be one of the first things I look at next time we pull and get data back. Um, okay, so then if you think about the way this has been posed, it’s basically, OK, that’s all these police attitudes we’re talking about are all these gun attitudes were talking about, and then attitudes toward the police. The attitude. So the police are, for the most part among republicans, you know, less complicated, right? And the reason we’re breaking this up here is because Patrick explicitly stated that, you know, police groups, as in the past, are not really for this. You know, and there’s, and, you know, not that you guys were listening, you need to know this, but the basics are, you know, police don’t want to show up to a shooting and have everybody there with a gun. Yeah. Well, and, you know, I mean, I think there’s two real approximate things to Yeah. To point out here, one, is that the day before the day of this bill, you know, there was a, an event on the steps of the capitol with a bunch of police chiefs from major cities and some small ones saying, hey, we don’t want this, you know, opposing it. And you know, within the, you know, the universe of the capital and, and legislative politics and Republican electoral politics. You know, the republican interest groups are relevant. Yeah. And the thing is that, I mean, more relevant maybe now than at any point in time. I mean, the police have always been sort of a core. I don’t even know if I want to call the police a core constituency, but you know, certainly police unions and police representatives have been usually an asset in an ally of Republican elected officials for the most part. Yeah. And there, you know, I mean, this is, you know, I mean, if you look at somebody like Cleat, this is a classic, you know, well mobilized well funded interest group that is also available for things like block walking. And you know, I mean, you know, we think of the trade group’s this way, but you think about the police this way too. I mean, you know, well, it’s police in every district. Yeah. Well, on the other piece of it too, is, you know, when you have hearings on these bills and you know, let’s say, you know, some, you know, nominally democratic aligned group comes and testifies and says, hey, you know, this is going to lead to more mass shootings more this more that it’s very easy for the Republican majority say, well, you know, these are people who already have an axe to grind. We know where they are. Doesn’t matter. It’s a lot harder to dismiss. You know, the head of Cleat or a police chief from your district coming in and saying, this is going to make our job harder. Yeah. And and, you know, Yeah, I mean, the presence of the police, of the police departments and law to put it this way, the presence of law enforcement is an institution has definitely become more politicized and deepened in recent years. You know, the back the blue movement, the blue flags, it’s a much more politically salient and politically mobilized force, both, you know, you know, in in in in the public sphere, you know, not only in, you know, the political, you know, the internal political world, but in the public sphere, it’s become much more symbolic and made more so by, you know, formal police organizations push back on the, you know, the increase, you know, the increased tempo of the conversation about reforming police practices in the wake of, You know, the ongoing series of police shootings in recent years. Right. And so, you know, you know, you take that complexity and you sort of try to stuff it all into a bag and simplified, and that’s kind of what you got out of the 2020 election, which is that the cities are on fire and that we need to protect police officers to be able to go out and do their jobs and, you know, keep generally, you know, democratic cities from decreasing, you know, these these funds, A lot of republicans felt like this was a really, you know, was there winning message in a campaign otherwise made very messy by the president. And it’s not surprising they do. In 2021 February 85 of Republicans expressed, expressed a favorable view of the police, 58 strongly. That’s pretty much as high a level of favorability as we could see express of anything or anybody. I mean, Donald Trump at his peak may have been around, you know, somewhere between 85 and 89%. I’m not sure he was at 58%. You know, it’s very favorable. But I mean, you know, this is not, there’s no daylight here between among republicans. And we’ve got a long series of, I mean, you know, and we’ve talked about the proximate kind of factors accentuating this race is obviously a huge part of this, where we’ve talked about this in the, you know, the kind of, uh, you know, the, you know, what has been presented in many ways or it’s been viewed as a kind of binary choice, which I think is a false choice obviously between the police and, you know, uh, black activism and civil rights activism. But it’s increasingly been seen as a binary choice by a lot of republicans and by a lot of partisans, right? And and partisan elected officials and thought leaders have had further this to their Yeah, I mean, but I think, yeah, I mean, but for the hate mail, I’d be interesting to kind of write about it and explore, you know, the value or whether it’s good tactics for police to be uh so politically positioned right now, whether on their own or as a as a as a tool of someone else. Well, particularly given, you know, what we know, you know, from, you know, having pulled on this, you know, years ago, and really in the early, probably it was probably have to go back and look, was probably in the early stages of activism are the latest round of activism around police shootings. But, you know, there’s, you know, an enormous wellspring of conservative support for the for law enforcement as an institution, you know, probably as I recall second only to the military, only to the military. Yeah, that’s right. And that’s of the same piece, frankly. Right. Exactly. The military and the police are sort of the groups that are above the others. And then you start asking about federal government, state government, local government, the public schools, you know, and they all have marble, oh, not in a completely polarized way. Now that’s shifted in the last couple of years to some degree. You go back to those earliest, the earliest institutional polling trusted institutions that we did. You know, it’s not like all the democrats hated the military and the and the police, it was just more evenly divided and just not as not as much of a consensus point as it as it was among republicans houses, you know, function conservative ideology and this these kinds of constructs, I think, you know, you’re sort of listening to us talk about this. I mean, it does sort of point out sort of what dan Patrick is navigating here, right, Which is that you’ve got to, you know, a small but, you know, energized minority of republicans for whom the gun issue is a voting issue, right? I mean, ultimately, you know, that is something that might influence their primary vote. You know, come come whenever primary season turns out to be right. On the other side, you’ve got basically police say, yeah, I don’t know if we want everybody to have guns. And by the way, I thought you were on our side And, you know, looking at Republican voters, the answer to that is they are on their side. And again, 85 hold a favorable view. You know, asked about, you know, the shooting of unarmed Black civilians by police officers and 78 of Republicans say those are isolated incidents, Right? Uh, you know, and, you know, something else, we can talk about 89 of Republicans feel safe in the neighborhoods where they live in Texas, right? You know, far more than any other group in the country. Maybe that’s, you know, maybe from their view that’s due to the police officers in the police presence, right, as opposed to get more complicated views of this. But ultimately, you know, this does, it’s an interesting thing that we don’t actually see very much. I don’t think in politics where you’ve got, you know, that minority within your party pushing for this thing, but you’ve also got a big constituency of the other party with a lot of support from the majority of your party saying, hey, I don’t think you should do that. Yeah, yeah, there’s an interesting intersection because of the policy overlap or where the policy meets here. So I think, you know, what’s interesting to me is I think that, you know, that’s what’s made good copy in the last few days, Right. But it’s also what, you know, depending on, you know, it’s getting, you know, circling back to where, you know, the rest of, you know, the gray area for dan Patrick and and to a certain extent for Greg Abbott and for the republicans overall is, you know, that also creates some room to maneuver, you know, so this, you know, this goes back to the question of yet we are entertaining a few minutes ago. I mean, does Yeah. You know, how how deep is the opposition? How deep and how broad is the opposition in the Senate, You know? Is it so deep? And is that is that why Patrick says he doesn’t have the votes? Or is it because he’s some combination of that, that reticence partially as a result of maybe these interest group politics, perhaps on principle. Um, you know, and how much it is, you know, they’re a sense that, you know, there’s there’s some maneuvering going on here, you know, because, you know, it seems to me, you know, there’s, you know, there’s some hazard for Patrick here, because he has to reckons, you know, he has to reconcile some competing interests here and some competing principles, you know. On the other hand, it may just be we’re not very used to seeing him have to do that, you know, to your point that we don’t see these flows in public opinion a lot, you know, I mean, and this is part of a, you know, and in some ways it leads back to the same problem, but I think there’s this sense of, well, you know, the lieutenant governor is not having his way. Wow, this must be some huge damn thing right now. It’s a significant thing. But I think there’s also an opportunity for Patrick to come out of this looking pretty good. I mean, if he, you know, can engineer some kind of a compromise on here on this, and, you know, on one hand, we could save right out that if he compromises on this, but they still get a bill a bill out that maybe has some kind of hedging, maybe a little bit more enforcement, maybe a little bit more protections for, you know, a latitude for police and situations where people have guns. You know, he’ll take some heat from this quarter of voters for whom of Republican voters, for whom this is a, you know, you know, give me liberty or give me death issue. Um, on the other hand, he comes out looking, you know, like he used his power for good in the overall coalition. And given the numbers we’re talking about, there may not be, you know, much of a price to pay and maybe some real rewards for that. You know, particularly given that, you know, Governor Abbott, you know, give a very, you know, Abbott like response, I think today or late yesterday, I guess it was this morning, you know, in a question I think was from from Patrick speed Tech, you know, about how he felt about this. And he was, you know, non committal under the umbrella of the priorities that he laid out for the special session, which really was a, you know, in this area, was a completely under specified requirement that the Legislature moved to make the Second Amendment to make texas a quote unquote Second America Second Amendment Sanctuary State. Now we’ve rift on that and it won’t go back to the linguistic construction there. But, you know, to me that is the lieutenant, that is the governor saying, well, we’ll just see what the what the legislature is going to do and how they handle it. And given that there’s all this other stuff going on, he will sign what they send him. He will claim credit for the things that are not in this bill, but that are pro gun rights. And, you know, to the extent that you don’t get a unlicensed carry bill, you know, he’ll blame it on the lieutenant governor. Yeah, maybe maybe call a special session to force it. Maybe not. I mean, or you know, added to the redistricting, you know? Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, I mean what, you know, I can’t help but wonder how many, I mean, I’m sure, I’m sure some people know this, you know, for whether either explicitly or implicitly, but I wonder, I wonder, I wonder in this discussion how many votes short they are. Yeah, Well, I think that’s the question. I mean, I, you know, because I would think, you know, if they were one vote short and I’m thinking of one vote in particular, I’m not sure why they don’t just have that vote. If it is the case that you take, everyone would actually want to push this policy forward in something, which, you know, I think your point is a good one though, which is just to say to the extent that Patrick can go and come up with a compromise, he’ll be able to go into 2022 saying, Hey, not only did I expand gun rights, but I did it in a way that, you know, the police officers that we so support were able to get on board with. Yeah, I did it against some headwinds and, you know, and you know, I think in terms of not to get too psychological here, but I mean, I think, please, well, I mean, I think lieutenant, you know, it’s shallow psychology, um, that’s my favorite kind or maybe that’s it, we’ll never mind. Um, but, you know, I mean, I think, yeah, and I think this plays into, you know, why I think that, you know, all the, you know, the constant speculation that dan Patrick is chomping at the bit to be governor. I think dan Patrick really is invested in this image of him as, you know, the master of the texas senate and as having, you know, reasserted the power of the lieutenant governor. I think that’s, I think, you know, and again, I don’t that’s not that’s that’s that’s not even remotely negative judgment. I mean, if I was dan Patrick and I could feel like I was, you know, a masterful lieutenant governor, I’d feel pretty good about it to probably, and I think that plays into this, I don’t think that’s critical, and I would say, I mean, even in a slightly less critical way, it’s always been my read that, you know, dan Patrick seems much more interested in getting policy wins. You know, that’s something that he can do very actively as lieutenant governor, it’s harder to do as governor. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think his and I think his sense of that is very, I mean, you know, it’s very you know, you know, I mean, to the extent that, you know, he he comes across as very ideological, as an ideological warrior. You know, these things are not, I mean, he integrates those two priorities of his, I think, fairly consistently and fairly, fairly predictably. And I think that’s gonna that’s gonna loom very large here. So, you know, you know, to the point about the Senate, you know, I I also think there’s I suspect, anyway, and this is having talked to other people, it’s, you know, I suspect there’s one or two senators, one of whom is is probably pretty committed based on almost his gender pronoun that senators track record, um, and public based on the same track record can also be worked with on this. And it’s not it’s not a principled opposition to the gun rights piece per se. So with that, hopefully by next week’s podcast. Well, no, well, no. Yeah, because it’s uh it’s quite the it’s an interesting situation with a lot of interesting currents and public opinion. You can find more about those currents in public opinion. I think we probably have a post on this topic pretty soon in the blog. In our blog zone at texas politics dot utexas dot e d U. Thanks to josh for being here again today. Thanks to are excellent technical crew in liberal arts development studio in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of texas at Austin. Thanks to you for listening and have a good and safe week and we’ll be back again with another second reading podcast next week. The second reading podcast is a production of the texas politics project at the University of texas at Austin