‘A special place in Hell’: Dems and gun reformers push back at GOP rhetoric after North Texas shooting

Following this weekend’s mall shooting in suburban Dallas that left eight people dead, Texas’ GOP politicians offered the familiar bromides.

In addition to calls for thoughts and prayers, Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans repeated the mantra that mental health, not guns, are to blame. During a Fox News appearance, the governor even pushed back when the interviewer brought up a poll showing that Americans favor background checks and a higher minimum age to buy firearms.

“We are working to address that anger and violence by going to its root cause, which is addressing the mental health problems behind it,” Abbott said. “People want a quick solution. The long-term solution here is to address the mental health issue.”

Even though Texas Democrats and gun reform activists have faced a virtual shutout during the current session of the Texas Legislature, they aren’t keeping quiet about the tragedy. Indeed, several put the blame for nation’s 190th mass shooting this year squarely in front of Abbott and other state Republican leaders.

“There is a special place in hell for people who watch all this happen and choose to do nothing,” tweeted Texas Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, who filed 24 gun reform bills this session, not one of which has received a hearing in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Indeed, of the 139 bills presented to the Texas House Select Committee on Community Safety — created following the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde — only 29 have made it out of committee, according to a KSAT report.

In his tweet, Gutierrez — whose district includes Uvalde — linked an interview he gave to MSNBC in which he identified at least two of the people he felt deserving of that special place in the fiery furnace.

“This Governor and this Lieutenant Governor, I’m sorry but they can go to hell,” Gutierrez says in the clip. “I am tired of people saying this stuff and doing nothing.”

Shannon Watts, founder of gun reform group Moms Demand Action, lit into Abbott for blaming mental illness when evidence suggests the North Texas gunman held white supremacist beliefs. Authorities now say the 33-year-old shooter espoused violent extremist rhetoric in numerous social media posts and had a patch bearing a white supremacist slogan.

“⁦@GovAbbott out here blaming mental illness for the outlet mall shooting, knowing the gunman was a white supremacist,” Watts tweeted. “White supremacy isn’t a mental illness; it’s an ideology enabled by extremists like him, and made deadly by his lax gun laws.”

In a tweet, State Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, railed against the Lege’s obsession with closing down access to gender affirming care for minors while doing little to curb easy access to firearms that actually kill children.

“We’ve put more effort into interfering with the very private, rare issue of gender-affirming care than addressing the endless death march of Texas children to gun violence,” Bernal tweeted. “The anti-trans effort’s slogan? ‘Save Texas Children.'”

 Meanwhile, the thoughts, prayers and handwringing continue from the right.

During a CNN appearance, U.S. Rep. Keith Self, the Republican congressman who represents Allen, tried to steer the conversation toward mental health and away from firearms. He doubled down when the interviewer pointed out that many believe politicians’ prayers “aren’t cutting it” amid the nation’s gun violence crisis.

“Well, those are people that don’t believe in an almighty God who has, who is absolutely in control of our lives,” Self said. “I am a Christian. I believe that he is.”

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This article appears in May 3-16, 2023.