Texas Gov. Greg Abbott appeared on “Fox News Sunday” to discuss potential gun law reforms after a shooter killed eight people in an outlet mall in his state over the weekend. In his interview, Abbott contrasted gun violence in Republican-controlled states with gun violence in California — something that didn’t go unnoticed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“We need to recognize a reality: 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,” Abbott said on Fox News. “… We’ve seen an increased number of shootings in states with easy gun laws, as well as states with very strict gun laws. 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.”
Newsom immediately seized on Abbott’s comments in torrent of tweets on Sunday, in which he said Abbott “conveniently leaves out the fact that Texas’ gun death rate is 73% higher than CA’s,” and “accidentally points to exactly why we need federal gun safety laws.” He also wrote that Abbott scrapped $211 million in mental health funding from the state’s budget — in his interview, Abbott claimed the root cause of gun violence was mental health disorders — and lambasted the idea of freedom being connected to protecting gun rights.
“This is freedom? To be shot at a mall? Shot at school? Shot at church? Shot at the movies? We have become a nation that is more focused on the right to kill than the right to live,” Newsom said. “This is not what the American people want. Do your damn job, Congress.”
It’s unclear where Newsom got the 73% figure from, but it’s certainly true that gun deaths are generally higher in Texas than they are in California. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that in 2021 — the last year such data is available — Texas had 4,613 firearm-related deaths, while California experienced 3,576, even though California has a larger population than Texas. In fact, according to that CDC data, the last year California had more gun deaths than Texas was in 2014.
As for Newsom’s assertion that Abbott “accidentally” argued for gun more reform at the federal level, he seems to have taken that from Abbott’s claim that gun violence is on the rise nationally. It would make sense that, if gun violence is truly on the rise in both red and blue states, then the issue seems like one that is not going to be solved by individual state governments.
Sunday’s episode is just the latest in Newsom’s crusade against Republican governors. Abbott is the governor’s second-favorite target behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom he tweeted about last week. Newsom’s sparring with Abbott seemed to crest last year, when he ran ads in several large newspapers that attacked Abbott on his gun record.
Newsom has faced criticism for his focus on Republican-led states while California faces issues of its own, but in this instance, it was technically Abbott who started it.
