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Blanca Santos clutched her 2-year-old daughter, Emma, tightly as the Houston mother took her 9-year-old son, Welfren, back-to-school shopping at a local Walmart.
With a mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart that killed 22 shoppers on Saturday fresh in her mind, Santos, 35, thought twice about going back-to-school shopping on Monday morning. But she ventured out to a northwest Houston Walmart anyway, because she had to. School was about to start in three weeks, and her grade-schooler needed new clothes and school supplies.
“We are scared, but we still need to buy things,” Santos said.
Houstonians, rattled by a pair of mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, that together killed 30 people over the weekend, went about their day more cautiously on Monday. Shoppers looked over their shoulders in parking lots and scanned for the nearest exits inside stores. Others made sure to conceal-carry their firearms.
Gabriela Reyes, 42, drove around the parking lot a few times before heading inside a Walmart off U.S. Highway 290 with her 5-year-old daughter, Madelyn, in tow.
“I looked around for anything suspicious,” Reyes said. “If I saw something, I was going to leave real quick.”
Inside the Walmart, families milled about the back-to-school aisles while store employees stocked shelves. Along one aisle, Walmart was selling rows of clear backpacks for $9.88 each — a requirement for students attending nearby Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District campuses in the wake of the Parkland high school mass shooting in February 2018.
Shoppers clamored for more security inside stores amid back-to-school season, the second busiest shopping period of the year. With Texas’ tax-free holiday coming Aug. 9-12, hordes of back-to-school shoppers are expected in stores across the Houston area, looking to take advantage of no sales tax on clothing and school supplies. The weekend-long tax break will shave as much as 8.25 percent in state and local sales taxes from consumer’s bills on a variety of back-to-school-related goods.
Madeleine Garcia, 27, took her daughter Isabella, 9, and son Gianni, 5, back-to-school shopping at the Walmart on Monday to avoid the crowds this coming weekend. Garcia urged Walmart to install metal detectors and hire police officers to harden the stores from mass shooters.
“I would take a bullet for my kids,” Garcia said, echoing the story of a young father and mother who were killed shielding their baby from the El Paso shooter.
Walmart officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Saturday, the company’s official Twitter account issued the following statement: “We’re in shock over the tragic events at Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso, where store 2201 & club 6502 are located. We’re praying for the victims, the community & our associates, as well as the first responders. We’re working closely with law enforcement & will update as appropriate.”
Ira Williams, 42, went to the Woodforest Bank inside the Walmart conceal-carrying his handgun. The Houston father of three said he didn’t want to go to the bank, but needed some cash to pay some bills. Williams, who worked as a Target security guard for two years while he was in college, called on Walmart to hire local police officers to patrol store aisles.
“I would feel more protected if they had three or four police officers patrolling the store,” Williams said.
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Shoppers also debated various gun legislation, such as background checks, and what retailers could do to curb gun violence across the country. Walmart in 2015 stopped selling assault-style rifles, and last year raised the minimum age for gun sales to 21 in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting.
Reyes, the Houston mother, said Walmart shouldn’t be in the business of selling rifles, and called for stricter background checks.
“AR-15s aren’t for any normal people,” Reyes said. “Living in the city, we don’t need guns like that.”
Williams, the Houston father with a concealed-carry permit, agreed, saying assault rifles should only be for police officers and the military. However, he said bans on firearm sales is not the answer to solving American’s gun violence.
“I don’t want to take people’s guns away, but AR-15s and Ak-47s are not for normal citizens,” Williams said. “I’m for background checks. Congress needed to pass that like yesterday.”
Yazmin Villarreal, 26, made her twice-weekly trip to that Walmart to grab some diapers for her sister’s baby and to pick-up her prescription medication. Her husband, worried about mass shootings, had given her an electric stun gun, and is now teaching her how to use a handgun, she said.
“Shootings are an everyday thing now,” Villarreal said. “You never know when it might happen.”