The Standard’s news roundup gives you a quick hit of interesting, sometimes irreverent, and breaking news stories from all over the state.
Dallas Cowboys owner and General Manager Jerry Jones seems to be changing his tune, again, about NFL players protesting during the national anthem.
Just two weeks ago, Jones took a knee alongside his team before the national anthem and then stood linking arms with them while it was performed.
He spoke with reporters after that September 25 game.
“We all agreed that our players wanted to make a statement about unity and we wanted to make a statement about equality,” he said.
But Sunday night Jones said that if his players didn’t stand for the national anthem or did anything that is ‘disrespectful to the flag’ they won’t play.
Talking to the press after the Cowboys loss to the Green Bay Packers Sunday night, Jones took a hard line on the protests.
“We cannot, we cannot in the NFL in anyway give the implication that we tolerate disrespect of the flag. We cannot do that,” he said.
Jones made that statement after being asked about Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to leave Sunday’s game between the Indianapolis Colts and the San Francisco 49ers after more than 20 49ers knelt during the anthem.
Former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick started the demonstrations last season to protest police brutality and violence against people of color.
The tiny Texas town of Moran, which is a couple of hours west of Fort Worth, is in the national spotlight because it’s where the ‘bump stock’ device is made.
Bump stocks allow semi-automatic rifles to perform more like fully automatic weapons. During the Las Vegas mass shooting, the gunman apparently used a bump stock. It’s still not known whether he used one made in Moran.
Slide Fire Solutions is the company behind bump stocks. Owner Jeremiah Cottle wasn’t available for comment, but Shackelford County Commissioner Lanham Martin has known the Cottle family for a long time. He spoke with KERA News in North Texas.
“I know in my heart that Jeremiah’s sick over it – sick that something that he put so much time and effort in was misused the way it was misused,” Martin said.
Walmart and Cabela’s have pulled the devices from their stores. Congressional leaders from both parties are talking about banning bump stocks, and the National Rifle Association said they would be open to stricter regulations on them.
Martin, for one, is opposed to that.
“I just think the whole idea of attacking a product or the person that produced that product is ridiculous,” Martin says. “It’s senseless. We don’t hear about planes being banned after 9-11, but they were the direct cause of all the carnage.”
Martin says Slide Fire has been a good thing for Moran, adding jobs and people to the tiny town of 270 residents.
Texas craft brewers have a reason to raise a glass. Breweries in the state were awarded 21 medals at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado that ended on Saturday.
The distinction of most medals won by a single brewery went to Houston’s own Saint Arnold Brewing Company. They earned three.
