Texas AG takes on Twitter bots for Elon Musk, leaves school shootings to armed teachers

There’s excellent public safety news coming out of Texas in the wake of last month’s horrific elementary school shooting: State Attorney General Ken Paxton, his eye clearly on the ball, is investigating fake Twitter accounts.

On Monday, 13 days after 19 students and two teachers were slaughtered in Uvalde, Texas, the state’s top law enforcement officer released a statement saying he was coming down hard on Twitter, demanding documents and answers about “fake bot accounts,” which as of this writing have not killed any schoolchildren.

The automated accounts are familiar to most Twitter users and, as Paxton’s statement notes, “often push deceptive and annoying activity,” by which I assume he means promoting the lie that former President Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election or denying that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is a nimrod.

Too many guns = Too much gun violence. Why can't we draw a line between these two points?

According to the statement, Twitter bots “may also inflate the value of the company and the costs of doing business with it, thus directly harming Texas consumers and businesses.” Like most American billionaires named Elon Musk, I applaud Paxton’s decision to use this moment to focus on what really matters most to American billionaire Elon Musk.

We must make Elon Musk's life easier

Musk, you see, moved Tesla Inc.’s headquarters to Texas last year and does all kinds of space-related work in the state. He also, totally coincidentally, seems to be trying to wriggle out of a deal he made to buy Twitter for $44 billion in the same calm way a guy who woke up married to a stranger in Las Vegas types “24-hour annulment services near me” into Google.

Why do mass shootings keep happening? Because this is what we've allowed America to become.

Twitter shares fell to $39.56 on Monday. Musk’s deal has him paying $54.20 a share, which according to math is not good.

For some time, the billionaire has been complaining about bots and accusing Twitter of dramatically undercounting the number of fake users on its site.

Musk buying Twitter? Stop freaking out. We have no clue what will happen.

This excerpt from a Wall Street Journal story highlights the seriousness of the issue: “Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on May 16 tweeted that the company had shared information with Mr. Musk about how it estimates spam figures. Mr. Musk responded with a poop emoji.”

Musk, Paxton both troubled by bots

On Monday, attorneys for Musk sent a letter accusing the social media company of refusing to give him data on how it estimates fake accounts and threatening to pull out of the deal.

That letter – and you will NOT believe this crazy coincidence – was sent the same day Paxton released his statement. It’s almost as if the two share a patriotic desire to protect American lives by having an accurate census of every spam account on Twitter.

Musk + Twitter = good for free speech: But it's a 'nightmare' for progressives.

Musk has claimed, without citing a source, that 20% of Twitter accounts are fake. In his statement, Paxton showed that he also can say things without providing evidence: “Twitter has received intense scrutiny in recent weeks over claiming in its financial regulatory filings that fewer than 5% of all users are bots, when they may in fact comprise as much as 20% or more.”

The fact that Musk and Paxton both used the same figure must prove it’s true. And besides, the last thing Americans need now is to be distracted by phony tweets or Elon Musk losing money. They need to worry about where the next mass shooting is going to happen.

Better arm the teachers

Of course when it came to the Uvalde shooting, Paxton took his role as attorney general seriously and went on Fox News the day of the massacre to suggest staffing schools with something of a teacher/warrior hybrid.

“We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly,” Paxton said. “Because the reality is we don't have the resources to have law enforcement at every school. … So having the right training for some of these people at the school is the best hope. And nothing’s going to work perfectly, but that, in my opinion, is the best answer to this problem.”

I'm a Texas school teacher. Do our leaders expect me to be a gunfighter also?

Even a tragically undercounted Twitter bot would know that’s not the best answer. But it does give me an idea to help Paxton help Musk while simultaneously not helping Americans facing gun violence, which seems to be Paxton’s overarching goal.

What if we arm and prepare and train all Twitter users so they can respond quickly to potentially malicious fake Twitter accounts?

Imagine this scenario: A user is at home, enjoying a quick read through the soul-sucking darkness of his Twitter feed, when all of a sudden, up pops a tweet from @NotABitcoinScam0123. The commonsense and cat-like reflexes of the average American kick in, the user pulls a weapon and … BLAM! BLAM! … shoots his device. Problem solved.

Within weeks, everyone’s phone or laptop would be blown to bits. Twitter would cease to exist because nobody can access the internet. Bots would disappear for the same reason. Elon Musk wouldn’t be out $44 billion. And Americans could get back to worrying about all the guns and all the shootings and all the nothing that attorneys general like Ken Paxton are doing to help.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook: facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Texas AG takes on Twitter to help Elon Musk but not gun control