(TheLastPatriotNews.com) – Texas’s Republican Governor Greg Abbott has urged a public focus on mental health to prevent mass shootings long-term in the US, a call coming after a new massacre in his state took eight lives.
On Saturday afternoon, a shooter murdered at least eight people and wounded seven others at the Allen Premium Outlets, a shopping mall in Allen, outside Dallas.
The gunman was only stopped when he was shot and killed by a police officer working an unrelated assignment.
The Allen shooting came days after, on April 28, a shooter killed five people in a house in Cleveland, Texas.
“People want a quick solution. One thing that we can observe is there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of anger and violence taking place in America,” Greg Abbott told “Fox News Sunday.”
“And what Texas is doing in a big-time way, we are working to address that anger and violence by going to its root cause, which is addressing the mental health problems behind it,” the Texas governor elaborated.
He said Texas lawmakers had been working on laws “to get guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals and to increase penalties against criminals who possess guns.”
At the same time, the governor stressed that there had been more mass shootings in both red and blue states.
“We’ve seen an increased number of shooting in states with easy gun laws and states with strict gun laws. I think the state in which the largest number of victims this year is in California. They have very tough gun laws,” Abbott pointed out, as cited by Newsmax.
He noted that Texas had been falling behind in mental health legislation and spending for years.
“That’s why over the last three sessions and we’ve added almost $25 billion to address mental health,” Abbott said.
The governor explained that his state’s legislature had plans to spend another $3 billion on mental health issues by the end of its current session. The funding would go mostly to measures for school children and rural communities in the state.
“It truly seems today that America is more divided than we have been in decades. We’ve gotta find a way in this country where we can once again reunite Americans as Americans and come together as one big family and in that regard find ways to reduce violence in our country,” he elaborated.
After Saturday’s shooting, Abbott said supporting families in the Allen community was a priority.
“I know that those families need answers as quickly as possible. I want to reiterate my gratitude for the swift response to just a single police officer had, to confront that dangerous gunman. He did the right thing and we are grateful for that officer’s heroism,” the governor concluded.
Do you agree with Governor Abbott? Please share your opinion by emailing [email protected]. Thank you.
