Texas Republicans loosened gun laws and slashed mental health funding

[wvit1001]

Texas Republicans loosened gun laws and slashed mental health funding before Uvalde shooting The Lone Star State has declared itself a "Second Amendment sanctuary"



Ramos had a predilection for egging people's cars, cutting up his own face "for fun," shooting random strangers with his BB gun, and sharing his firearm wishlists over social media. Ramos was also known to get into fistfights throughout middle school and would often lash out at his mother, which, according to neighbors, ended in at least one visit from the police. At one point, Ramos may have even been arrested for threatening to shoot up a school. But in Texas, where the Second Amendment is sacrosanct, none of this prevented the troubled teen from legally buying two military-style semi-automatic assault rifles and 375 rounds of ammunition on his eighteenth birthday, just a week before the shooting.

over the past several years – the state's GOP-led legislature has worked tirelessly to ensure that just about anyone can get a gun.

Ari Freilich, State Policy Director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said that Texas has "almost nothing" on its books to prevent the wrong people from getting their hands on a firearm.

"Almost no steps [have been] taken to prevent people with significant known risk factors for violence from accessing weapons designed to kill on a massive scale," Freilich said in an interview.

Last June, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, rubber-stamped seven measures designed to expand gun sales, pledging that the state would be "the leader in defending the Second Amendment."

Further, the Lone Star State has declared itself "Second Amendment sanctuary," a legally dubious status that holds that common sense gun control measures – like universal background checks; assault weapon bans; and red flag laws, which allow police to temporarily confiscate firearms from people who present a clear danger to themselves or their community – are wholly unconstitutional.


https://www.salon.com/2022/05/28/texas-loosened-laws-and-slashed-mental-health-funding-before-uvalde/

[D2D]

Nope!

[wvit1001]

nope you don't have a brain to be able to understand?

[chuck_curtis]

Evil is not a mental illness.

[stretch351c]

This kid passed 3 background checks and had nothing to raise a red flag.

[wvit1001]

so for stretch buying several guns and hundreds of rounds of ammo and extra magazines in just a few days shouldn't trigger any questions. 

[stretch351c]

It triggered 3 background checks Comrade.

[wvit1001]

it should have triggered way more than that.   

[wvit1001]

[chuck_curtis]

They were afraid commies would accuse them of racism for killing a minority.

[wvit1001]

Gov. Abbott’s Mental Health Cuts

Gov. Greg Abbott speculated that the gunman had mental health issues and called for more to be done. But last month, Abbott slashed $211 million from the state's department that oversees mental health programs, NBC News reports.

Texas ranked last out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia for overall access to mental health care, according to the 2021 State of Mental Health in America report.

"We as a state, we as a society, need to do a better job with mental health," Abbott said during a news conference at Robb Elementary School, where a gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers on Tuesday.

Abbott conceded the slain 18-year-old suspect had no known mental health issues or criminal history but said, "Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge.”

His assertions drew rebukes from public health experts and scholars who study mass murderers, as well as from his Democratic gubernatorial rival Beto O’Rourke, who was ejected from the news conference after storming the stage and accusing the pro-gun Republican of “doing nothing” to stop gun violence.

“There is no evidence the shooter is mentally ill, just angry and hateful,” said Lori Post, director of the Buehler Center for Health Policy and Economics at the Northwestern University School of Medicine. “While it is understandable that most people cannot fathom slaughtering small children and want to attribute it to mental health, it is very rare for a mass shooter to have a diagnosed mental health condition.”

David Riedman, founder of the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s K-12 School Shooting Database, said, "Overall, mass shooters are rational. They have a plan. It’s something that develops over months or years, and there’s a clear pathway to violence.”

The much bigger problem, they said, is Texas and many other states are awash in weapons.

“Texas has more guns per capita than any other state,” Post said. “After the tragic 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, the governor signed several bills to curb mass shootings; unfortunately, most of those bills involved arming the public to stop mass shooters."



https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/abbott-calls-texas-school-shooting-mental-health-issue-cut-state-spend-rcna30557

[wvit1001]