Once again, right wingers like Texas Governor Greg Abbott always deflect to "mental health" when there is a mass shooting instead of the assault weapons that are murdering innocent people each day in America.
These right wing extremist lawmakers made it easy for violent criminals, domestic terrorists, white supremacist hate groups, and mentally disturbed people to easily purchase assault weapons to commit mass murders. That's why we have a gun violence epidemic in America.
What's even worse, is that red states like Texas, allow anyone to own these deadly assault weapons to carry in public with no license or training to prove that a person can even operate one. But right wingers want to force voting ID's on people in order to vote. You can't make this stuff up.
So, in red states like Texas, domestic terrorists, violent criminals, and mentally disturbed people can carry loaded assault weapons with as much ammo as they like around town with no background checks to see if these people should even be allowed to own these deadly weapons.
Then after we see another deadly mass shooting in Texas, Abbott goes on about "mental health" but he cut $200 million dollars out of the department that handles mental health services in Texas. Abbott allows mentally disturbed people to own these deadly assault weapons in Texas with no questions asked. Again, you can't make this stuff up.
Like I said in a previous post above, it's all right wing political theatre. Republicans scream about "mental health", but they vote against mental health services or cut millions of dollars out of the programs that fund it. And even worse, red states allow mentally disturbed people to easily purchase assault weapons to kill people with because right wing lawmakers refuse to implement background checks to see if a person is mentally ill or not. Republicans have no intentions of helping to combat gun violence, they just need a "mental health" talking point to use each time a mass shooting occurs.
Abbott blamed Texas school shooting on lack of mental health resources. But he reportedly cut more than $200 million from the department that handles them.https://www.businessinsider.com/abbott-cut-mental-health-services-funding-in-texas-2022-5
CNN's Tapper demolishes Greg Abbott's scapegoating of mental illness for Allen shooting
CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Monday criticized suggestions by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that the state's mass shooting epidemic — thrown into national relief by the massacre at Allen Premium Outlets in the Dallas-Fort Worth area over the weekend — can be simply addressed as a mental illness problem.
"Texas has the unfortunate distinction of being home to some of the worst, deadliest mass shootings that this country has ever seen, especially in recent years," said Tapper. "Just last year in Uvalde, Texas, a gunman killed 21 people at Robb Elementary School, including 19th fourth graders and two teachers inside their classrooms. In 2019 at a Walmart in El Paso, 23 lives lost. 23 killed when a gunman opened fire after spewing racist rhetoric online. In 2018 at Santa Fe High School outside of Houston, ten people killed when a student opened fire with a revolver and shotgun belonging to his father. In 2017, Sutherland Springs, 26 people killed during Sunday services at First Baptist Church. In 2016 in Dallas, five officers shot to death when a gunman targeted police at a Black Lives Matter protest."
"These are just some of the mass shootings in Texas that I have covered for you from this desk, just some of them," said Tapper. "Some of the ones that made national headlines. There are obviously many more that don't get covered, not to mention the shootings of fewer than four people and the accidental shootings and the suicides. Almost every time Texas is devastated by gun violence, we hear a familiar refrain from the man who has been governor during this whole time."
"What Texas is doing in a big-time way, we're working to address that anger and violence by going to its root cause, which is addressing the mental health problems behind it," said Abbott in one interview clip.
"We as a state, we as a society, need to do a better job with mental health. anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge, period," he said in another.
"We all know that this is something that we must address as a nation but also as a state, and that is for all of to us do a better job to address mental health issues," he said in yet another.
"We should note, one, most people with mental health issues do not shoot people," said Tapper. "Two, mental health issues exist all over the world, but other countries do not have the same culture and laws that we have here in the United States, laws that allow folks who may be a danger to themselves or others to easily obtain firearms. Just looking at the data from the CDC as a general matter, the states that have taken steps to try to keep guns out of the wrong hands, those states have lower rates of death per capita by firearm, just as a factual matter."
Watch:
