Low turnout marks pro-gun rally in Santa Fe

Mark Crampton traveled to Santa Fe from Galveston with his long rifle and dog named Maggie Me Love on Saturday for a rally supporting armed teachers. Mark Crampton traveled to Santa Fe from Galveston with his long rifle and dog named Maggie Me Love on Saturday for a rally supporting armed teachers. Photo: Karen Warren, Staff / Houston Chronicle Photo: Karen Warren, Staff / Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 24 Caption Close Low turnout marks pro-gun rally in Santa Fe 1 / 24 Back to Gallery

A pro-gun rally in Santa Fe failed to draw a large audience on Saturday.

Organized by the San Antonio-based This Is Texas Freedom Force, the “Carry For Our Kids Rally” featured several speakers who presented arguments for arming teachers across Texas schools.

“It’s a really good message,” said Denise Jaimes, 53. “They’re hitting it right on point. It’s just that there’s nobody listening.”

Jaimes and her fiancé drove nearly two hours from their home in Cleveland to attend the rally after hearing about it on Facebook. But when they strolled into the pavilion at Runge Park to find more speakers and media members than actual audience members, she felt let down.

“I’m disappointed that there aren’t more people here, and I’m going to let people know that I’m disappointed,” said Jaimes, who for a long time was a member of the Texas Defense Force, a sovereign army for the state of Texas. “We could have had a strong stance here, and there’s just nobody here.”

Brandon Burkhart, president of This Is Texas Freedom Force, didn’t let the low turnout affect his mood. Instead, he projected confidence that the push for arming teachers in the name of student safety will continue to grow, despite a lack of media attention.

“First and foremost, we’re trying to educate the public on the other side,” he said Saturday , just a few minutes before he introduced the first speaker to take the microphone atop a wagon re-purposed as a stage.

“Most of the media has been running the with the narrative of March For Our Lives, and pushing more gun control and stuff like that,” he said. “Basically, we want to do away with gun-free zones. We want any teacher that wants to carry to carry.”

Usually, the main objective of Burkhart’s organization is Texas history and its preservation. “But we do dabble in rights,” he said. “And whenever our students are being targeted, that’s why we insert ourselves.”

He set out to plan the rally in the wake of last month’s tragic school shooting at Santa Fe High School, which claimed the lives of eight students and two adults. He contacted several organizations from around the state, including Open Carry Texas and Lone Star Gun Rights. He also reached out to locals to ask if anyone would like to speak on the stage, which featured a large cutout of the Alamo and a prop armadillo with its shell painted like the Texas flag.

“We didn’t get any blowback. I spoke to several residents, and the town has welcomed us with open arms. Though there were a few who had some reservations,” he said. “And I told them, ‘If you don’t attend the event, you won’t even know we were here.’”

The biggest hoots and hollers of the day came about when radio host Doc Greene, of “The Amazing Doc Greene Show” spoke. In his speech, he tapped the holster on his right hip, where he keeps his 1911, a semi-automatic pistol, and invoked the Bible regularly.

“Someone asked, ‘What would Jesus do?’ Well, we know that. We have the answer to that,” he said, before paraphrasing from the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus told his disciples to sell their cloaks and buy a sword.

“The whole point is that the Lord Jesus Christ understood that the ability to defend yourself and others is more important than comfort itself,” said Greene. “That’s why he said sell your coat and buy a gun. Jesus might have been the first Navy Seal. He said it would be better for you to be cold and wet than to not be able to defend yourself and others.”

This was met with resounding applause. But while many of the other attendees cheered and, one rally-goer, Steve Johnson remained largely silent. He sat at a picnic table, listening to speakers for much of the morning, his arms crossed in front of the green “Santa Fe Strong” T-shirt he wore, which bears the names of the students who were murdered in the shooting.

“I wanted to just come and hear all the viewpoints,” Johnson said. While Johnson technically lives on the other side of the city line in Algoa, his children attend Santa Fe schools, and his daughter was at Santa Fe on the day of the shooting.

“It was a pretty bad day for us,” he said of May 18. “But it was a worse day for my daughter.”

That’s why it is so important to him to soak up as many viewpoints as possible in this national debate that has now become incredibly local.

“You know, this is a big issue right now, with school safety, and we’re trying to listen to everyone’s views, whether we agree with them or don’t agree with them, because it’s a very serious situation, and we want to have an honest discussion,” he said. “We’re pro-gun, and I personally am OK with certain parts of teachers having firearms.”

He hoped that Saturday would help him find answers to the big questions his community is grappling with. But he knows that finding true solutions will take time, and more voices than can be offered up in one rally fueled by out-of-town organizations.

Still, he has hope that Santa Fe will be able to create solutions going forward.

“Nothing alone is going to stop it. It’s going to have to be a group of things put together,” he said. “And I think education is really important first step in that. Getting the voice out there of whatever it is you’re pushing so people can understand.”

maggie.gordon@chron.com;

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