California Gov. Gavin Newsom went after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for “conveniently” failing to mention Texas’ soaring gun death rate as he tried to attack California’s gun control laws on Sunday.
Abbott (R), appearing on Fox News a day after a gunman and eight people were killed at a suburban Dallas mall, argued that gun violence affects all states, regardless of gun laws, as he tried to deflect attention from repeated Texas mass shootings.
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“I think that the state in which the largest number of victims occurred this year is in California, where they have very tough gun laws,” Abbott said.
Newsom (D) pointed out on Twitter that Abbott “conveniently” ignored the fact that Texas’ gun death rate is 73% higher than California’s.
He “accidentally points to exactly why we need federal gun safety laws,” Newsom said.
California has an “A” grade on the Giffords Law Center’s annual gun law scorecard and ranks highest among all 50 states for gun law strength. The state ranks 43rd in the gun death rate, at 9 gun deaths per 100,000 people.
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Texas received an “F” grade on the gun law scorecard and ranked 27th, with a gun death rate of 15.6 per 100,000 people.
Saturday’s mass shooting in Allen, Texas, was among over 200 mass shootings in America this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. There have been 14,780 people killed this year in gun violence.
Newsom, in a tweet on Saturday, asked whether the Texas massacre was “freedom” as he called on Congress to take action.
“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,” he wrote.
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“This is not what the American people want. Do your damn job, Congress.”
