According to a new report by GIFFORDS, gun deaths have risen 63 percent since Governor Greg Abbott took office.
The old adage of an armed society being a polite society has never been proven true. The simple matter is that the more people own guns, the more people die by them. There is broad scientific consensus on that, with only a handful of discredited proponents saying otherwise.
Abbott loves guns. Under his leadership, he promised to make Texas a “Second Amendment sanctuary,” catering to the belief among many gun owners they are an oppressed minority. After passing permitless carry in the state, mass shootings increased by 62.5 percent. The state’s already lax gun control has only eroded under Abbott.
So, it is unsurprising that raw gun deaths have gone up during his administration. According to the GIFFORDS data obtained from the Centers for Disease Control, there were 2,848 deaths in 2014. In 2022, it had risen nearly double to 4,630.
The numbers are even grimmer when you add population factors. Texas’s population grew by 19 percent between 2010 and 2022, according to census data. Any way you slice it, there is no way for the spike in gun deaths to be explained away as more people in the state. The rate of gun deaths rose three times faster than the population.
Some of this is likely because of the spike of gun deaths during COVID. Gun sales rose during the pandemic, as many people feared civil unrest, which led to an increase in accidental deaths. However, that can only account for one-third of the increase. Clearly, something else is also a factor.
“Since being elected, Abbott has weakened Texas’s gun laws while making it easier for those intent on doing harm to obtain and carry firearms,” reads the GIFFORDS analysis. “In 2021, he repealed the state’s concealed carry permitting laws, effectively letting anyone walk the streets with a loaded gun—with no background check or training required. And in 2023, he harmed survivors and victims of gun violence by making it less likely that gun owners obtain insurance.”
A majority of Texans support more gun control. Polling from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin shows that 78 percent of residents want background checks on all sales, and 66 percent support red flag laws that take guns out of the hands of perpetrators of intimate partner violence.
The latter is another area where Abbott has stood in the way of safety. Following the massacre at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, the federal government passed a gun control bill that would expand red flag laws. Abbott had previously voiced some support for the idea, but backed down after a backlash from his party’s right.
Participation in the law was voluntary for states, though they would lose some federal grant money for failing to. Texas chose not to do so, with many Republicans ridiculously comparing the law to an act of mass disarmament.
