Dallas newspaper calls on Abbott to act on gun violence

The Dallas Morning News is urging Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to take action on gun violence after a gunman killed eight people at a Dallas-area outlet mall over the weekend.

“Gov. Abbott, Eight more innocent people were killed in Texas yesterday. This time it was a shopping mall. They were simply going about their day, men, women, children. A man got out of his car and sprayed them with bullets of such a high caliber and in such rapid succession that a mass killing was inescapable,” the Dallas Morning News editorial board wrote in an open letter to the governor.

The board also called out Abbott for labeling the Allen Premium Outlets killings an “unspeakable tragedy,” arguing instead that “the people of Texas need you to speak to it and its cause.” 

“There is nothing conservative about refusing to acknowledge evidence or give voice to the true nature of a problem. The people who are dead today are not dead because a twisted and evil soul walked among them,” the editors wrote. 

“They are dead because that person was able to obtain a weapon so powerful and with such high capacity that even the bravest and fastest response of law enforcement could not save their lives.”

Abbott focused on mental health in a Fox News interview after the shooting, arguing there’s a “dramatic increase in the amount of anger and violence that’s taking place in America.” 

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But mental health struggles are becoming more common across the world, members of the editorial board — which recommended Abbott for reelection last year — countered, while saying “no nation suffers from mass shootings like the U.S.”

The outlet mall shooting, in which seven people were injured, comes less than a year after the massacre of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde last year. 

Texas State Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D), who represents Uvalde, over the weekend compared living in Texas to “living in communist Russia” and called out Abbott and other leaders and law enforcement for “refus[ing] to tell us the truth as to what’s going on here.” 

“This is not the Texas miracle that Greg Abbott likes to call it. We’re living in a Texas nightmare, and it’s a nightmare that they created. It’s a chaos that they created,” Gutierrez said. 

Reports indicate the gunman in the Allen outlet mall shooting used an AR-15-style rifle — and reporting found responders to the Uvalde incident held off on confronting the shooter out of concern over the high-powered weapon he used.