New Texas Law Causes Mass Shootings To Rise Sharply

 

The idiots in the Texas legislature passed a law allowing anyone over 21 to carry a pistol without any permit being required. They were warned that this would cause gun violence to rise -- and now that prediction has come true. Here is how Jef Rouner reports it is in Reform Austin News:

Just over a year ago, Governor Greg Abbott signed a law making it legal for anyone in Texas over the age of 21 to openly carry a gun in public without a permit or license. Since then, the number of mass shootings has risen 62.5 percent.

From June 13, 2020, to June 13, 2021, when Abbott signed the permitless carry law, Texas had 40 mass shootings. In that same time period from 2021 to 2022, the number of mass shootings rose to 65. The numbers were compiled using the databases from the Stanford University MSA Data Project, the Mass Shooting Tracker, Vox’s Gun Violence Archives, Mother Jones, The Washington Post, the FBI, and the Congressional Research Service. All incidences met at least two definitions of a mass shooting. 

The math is even more damning when taking the number of victims into account. In the one-year period before the bill was signed, 187 people were killed or injured in mass shootings in Texas. In the one-year-after period, it was 375 people killed or injured, a 100 percent increase. Even if the 40 people killed or injured in the Robb Elementary School Massacre are excluded, the increase is 79 percent, an enormous jump in bloodshed. 

When the bill was signed, Texas Democrats predicted that the law would likely increase gun violence. 

“The permitless carry bill will cause more violence and loss,” U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-El Paso) said in a statement at the time. “Despite overwhelming support for common-sense gun violence prevention legislation like universal background checks, Texas Republicans, led by a cowardly governor, are more interested in groveling for the gun lobby’s attention than they are in preventing gun violence and honoring victims and survivors in El Paso and across Texas.”

That grim prediction has come true.