Deaths from firearms keep climbing in Texas, decades after lawmakers began weakening gun regulations

[TomCADem]

New article in the Texas Tribune describes how as Texas has accelerated efforts to ease access to guns, deaths from firearms have increased.

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/10/texas-gun-fatalities-laws/

Deaths from firearms in Texas — the vast majority of them suicides or homicides — have continued rising in Texas, reaching levels not seen in almost three decades.

At the same time, Texas relaxed its gun laws in a decadeslong push to expand Second Amendment rights in the state, most recently in 2021 when Gov. Greg Abbott signed what Republicans called a “constitutional carry” bill into law, allowing Texans to carry handguns without a license or training.

Texas lawmakers have approved more than 100 bills that loosened regulations on firearms over the last two decades, from blocking campus “zero tolerance” policies that expelled gun-carrying students to preventing hotels from restricting handguns, according to data compiled by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that deaths from firearms in Texas generally began to increase about two decades ago after a dramatic decline in the 1990s. There were 15 deaths by firearms per 100,000 people in Texas in 2021, a 50% jump from 1999 when there were on average 10 deaths by firearms per 100,000 people. Over the same period, firearm-related homicides rose 66% and suicides involving firearms rose 40%.

[Blue Owl]

1. All the thoughts and prayers are increasing the violence and death toll

[TomCADem]

2. I Almost Expect Governor Abbott to Create A Texas Thoughts and Prayers Strike Force...

...that can arrive at the scene of the latest mass shooting in matching holy super suits with color coordinated AK-47s with biblical verses etched on the barrels.

The will arrive to a fanfare of Gregorian chants, pray with the force of Jimmy Swaggert and Jerry Falwell, then upon completion, distribute firearms to believers, and offer bounties on Texas women with unwanted pregnancies who are seeking an abortion.

[Jean Genie]

3. Of course they did

Silly people; don't you know it's marijuana and fatherless homes that are causing all the gun deaths? Certainly NOT AK15's!

[IronLionZion]

4. No one could have seen this coming

An armed society is a polite society. So the solution is clearly more guns. Rinse and repeat.

[NowISeetheLight]

5. Graph?

Maybe later if I’m feeling OK I’ll take some time and assemble a graph. It would show gun deaths in TX with gun ownership levels in TX. The 2nd amendment nuts keep saying we need more guns to be safe, so at some points more guns should equal a decline in deaths.

[Grins]

6. Abbott "both sided" gun deaths last Sunday.

On, of course, Fox News!

Said blue states with tough gun laws have same problem as red states that don’t, offering up California as an example.

It’s bullshit worthy of a Champion bullshitter. States with tough gun restrictions have FEWER gun deaths by an order of magnitude. California, with 10 million more people, had fewer deaths by guns than Texas. (2022.)

[Aristus]

7. No other state has ever been in love with its own legend.

They wanted the Wild West. They got it.

Unfortunately, it's wilder than the Wild West ever truly was in real life. Any town of any size had strict measures in place to ensure you weren't carrying the whole time. Enter town: check your heat - with the local law or in a hotel. Leave town: pick up your piece from wherever it was secured.

Gunfucking Texans, never wanting to be told what to do by anyone ever, at all, won't stand for that aspect of the Wild West. They want the "Four Dead In Five" every hour, every day.