Greg Abbott omits that most Texas mass shooters legally owned guns

This article is co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of energy. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to obtain tales like this one in your inbox as quickly as they’re revealed. Also, sign up for The Brief, our every day e-newsletter that retains readers in control on the most important Texas news.

Without mentioning the Uvalde mass capturing, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott final week declared college security a precedence for the present legislative session and once more dismissed requires extra legal guidelines that would limit entry to guns.

“Some want more gun laws, but too many local officials won’t even enforce the gun laws that are already on the books,” the governor mentioned throughout his annual State of the State address. Without offering a supply or clear information, he then asserted that “most gun crimes are committed by criminals who possess guns illegally.” Abbott proposed a 10-year obligatory minimal sentence for people who find themselves not legally allowed to have a firearm however have them anyway.

“We need to leave prosecutors and judges with no choice but to punish those criminals and remove them and their guns from our streets,” mentioned Abbott, a Republican.

But Abbott’s speech averted a evident actuality: The majority of the state’s 19 mass shootings over the previous six many years have been carried out by males who legally acquired firearms, in line with an investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune revealed earlier than his speech. Guns have been legally obtained in 13 shootings, together with two wherein the shooter was not allowed to have one however took benefit of a loophole within the legislation that doesn’t require background checks for firearms that are acquired from personal people. Firearms have been obtained illegally in three cases. The remainder of the instances have been unclear.

The news organizations’ evaluation discovered that lawmakers didn’t move not less than two dozen payments that would have prevented individuals from legally acquiring the weapons and ammunition utilized in seven of the state’s mass shootings. Such measures included requiring common background checks, banning the possession of sure firearms and elevating the minimal age to buy an assault weapon from 18 to 21 years outdated.

State lawmakers as an alternative have loosened restrictions over time on publicly carrying guns whereas making it tougher for native governments to manage them.

Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son was among the many 19 kids and two lecturers killed final 12 months at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, agreed with Abbott that criminals mustn’t have entry to guns. But, Cross mentioned, the governor’s feedback ignore the actual fact that the individuals chargeable for many mass shootings didn’t beforehand have a legal background.

“Before May 24, our shooter was not a criminal,” Cross mentioned. “If this shooter hadn’t been able to just go in and buy those guns literally two days after his 18th birthday, then my child would still be alive.” Abbott, he mentioned, “wants to be reactive instead of proactive, and proactive is what we need to stop these things.”

The governor didn’t reply to a number of requests for touch upon the news organizations’ investigation or about his remarks throughout his State of the State deal with.

Little proof exists to help Abbott’s declare, mentioned Bill Spelman, who labored for a nationwide police affiliation for seven years and has spent the final 30 years educating and researching legal justice coverage.

“To just say that most gun crimes are committed by criminals who possess guns illegally is a statement you can’t back up,” mentioned Spelman, an emeritus professor of public affairs on the University of Texas at Austin.

James Densley, who co-founded the Violence Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit analysis heart greatest identified for its extensive mass shooter database, mentioned that Abbott’s 10-year obligatory minimal sentence proposal would do little to discourage mass shootings as a result of the shooter doesn’t survive in most of these instances and in others is already going through life in jail. In the overwhelming majority of the nationwide instances wherein it’s identified how the shooters obtained their firearms, they did so legally, Densley mentioned.

Densley mentioned totally different types of gun violence require focused approaches. For occasion, restrictions on assault-style weapons and large-capacity magazines may very well be efficient at decreasing mass shootings, however much less so at curbing “everyday gun violence,” he mentioned.

“And I think politicians actually know this,” Densely mentioned. “They understand it intuitively. But they have to say what is politically convenient to satisfy the needs of their constituents and others. And so they often conflate these different forms of gun violence to be perceived to be talking about one thing when they’re actually talking about something else.”

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin has been a monetary supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news group that is funded partially by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Financial supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Find an entire list of them here.