Greg Abbott implicates 'the government' in Saturday’s mass shooting

Texas Governor Greg Abbott declined to say whether he would support measures to reduce gun violence during an appearance on Fox News Sunday.

Abbott's remarks come a day after eight people were murdered in Saturday's mass shooting — the 199th so far in 2023 — at the Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas.

Speaking with anchor Shannon Bream, Abbott blamed "the government" for the massacre.

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"And I'll be going up to Allen later today to begin the process, uh, providing hope and, and healing. But I gotta tell you that there are questions that are lingering that the families want answers to, and that is, why did this happen? Why did the government do this? How did this happen? And I know that those families need an answer as quickly as possible," Abbott said. "And then the last thing I'll tell you, and, and I just wanna reiterate my gratitude and the gratitude of all Texans for the swift response of that police officer — you had just a single police officer who had to confront, uh, that dangerous gunman — and did the right thing by taking swift action to eliminate the gunman. And we are great for that officer's heroism."

Bream addressed recent Fox News polling showing that reasonable restrictions have enormous public support.

"Just out from Fox News. 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 eighty percent. Are there things that you would consider in Texas or that you think Congress should consider at a federal level along those lines?" Bream asked.

"Well, on the federal level, as you know, some laws were passed last year to begin to address this. 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 criminals into increased penalties for criminals who possess guns," replied Abbott, who has loosened firearm laws in the Lone Star State in spite of the recent spikes in violence.

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"But, Shannon, we need to, to recognize a reality. What we've seen across the United States over the past year or two. And that is a, an increased number of shootings in both red states and blue states. Shannon, we've seen an increased number of shootings in states with easy gun laws as well as states with very strict gun laws," Abbott continued. "I think that the state in which the largest number of victims, uh, have occurred this year is in California where they have very tough gun laws where 11 people died."

That statement is demonstrably false. According to WiseVoter.org, California ranks 44th in terms of gun deaths per capita, with 8.5 per 100,000. Texas, however, sits at 26th, with 14.2 per 100,000.

"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 stated. "And what Texas is doing in a big-time way, we are working to address that anger and violence by going to its root cause, which is addressing the mental health problems behind it."

But the governor was not quite finished.

"One, one last thing about this, Shannon, and that is, it truly seems today that America is more divided than we've been in decades," he declared, adding that "we gotta find a way in this country where we can once again reunite Americans as Americans and come together as one big family, and in that regard, find ways to reduce violence in our country."

Watch the clips below or at this link.

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