Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) said on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that with the mass shooting Saturday in Allen, TX, the “long-term solution” was to address the mental health issue.
Host Shannon Bream said, “As happens with these shootings, it almost immediately turns to the political conversation about gun reforms. One state senator pointing the finger at you and the GOP there in Texas saying there are loose and dangerous gun laws. When you ask people what they would favor, background checks for guns, enforcing existing gun laws, legal age to 21, requiring mental health checks, flagging people for danger to self, all of those score at more than 80 percent. Are there things that you would consider in Texas or that you think Congress should consider at a federal level along those lines?”
Abbott said, “At the state level, listen, this is something that we’ve been grappling with over the past year, and there are some potential easy solutions, such as passing laws that we’re working on right now to get guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals and to increase penalties for criminals who possess guns. What we’ve seen across the United States over the past year or two, and that is an increased number of shootings in both red states and blue states.”
He continued, “I think that the state in which the largest number of victims have occurred this year is in California, where they have very tough gun laws where 11 people died. And so one thing that we can observe very easily, and that is there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of anger and violence that’s taking place in America.”
Abbott added, “What Texas is doing in a big-time way, we are working to address that anger and violence but going to its root cause, which is addressing the mental health problems behind it.”
He concluded, “People want a quick solution. The long-term solution here is to address the mental health issue.”
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