Texas A-G Is Still Urging New York Gun Lovers to Come On Down, Despite Shooting at Houston College

What a difference a few days make. Last week, Texas Attorney-General Greg Abbott was putting out Internet ads inviting New Yorkers who were frustrated by that state’s new gun control laws to come down to Texas, where they will have “the liberty and the opportunity to achieve your dreams.” On Tuesday three students were wounded in a shooting at a Houston-area college. “This story has gotten somewhat complicated in the last few hours,” was how Greta Van Susteren put it, when she began her interview with Abbott on last night’s On the Record. Which didn’t keep Abbott from deploying gun-lobby talking points and painting the Lone Star State as a libertarian paradise.

After making the appropriate expressions of sympathy (“No parent believes that schools should be in a way that a child could get shot at school”) Abbott launched into a string of disclaimers: that Lone Star was a college not an elementary school, and this was an apparently gang-related shooting, not a lone stalker with mental health issues. (Seems there were two guys with guns. So I guess it’s not true that “if one other person had had a gun the shooting would never have happened”. Maybe it’s more like “if one other person had had a gun they’d start shooting at one another and innocent people would get caught in the crossfire.” But I digress, gentle reader.) and no law could have prevented the shooting. "Look at Columbine. Columbine shooting took place at the time when there was an assault weapon ban. The shooting that took place in Connecticut, guns were prohibited where the school took place, and even President Obama's staff admitted …that the president's proposals to crack down on gun crime would not have solved the problem or prevented the problem in Connecticut.” He also noted that there was a ban on guns at Lone Star College. A situation which Republicans are trying to remedy, of course.

Abbott went on to say that the ad’s purpose was “to show the contrast between big government in New York and limited government in Texas… In New York, you have higher taxes, more government, more regulation, and yet less liberty, and importantly, fewer jobs. And now the governor is trying to constrict people's liberty even more. Whereas in Texas, we have lower taxes, less government, fewer regulations, more jobs and more liberty.” (except when it comes to abortion, birth control and what your kids learn in school).

From which the conversation turned to whether Abbott was planning to challenge Rick Perry for the governorship in 2014. He played coy.

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Showing 7 reactions

commented 2013-01-24 11:14:52 -0500 · Flag

Abbott sez

That incident could have been a mass strangling! Are we to confiscate peoples’ hands next?!

commented 2013-01-23 22:09:45 -0500 · Flag

I lived in Dallas briefly in the late 70s. Didn’t really notice lots of people with guns, but damn near everyone from about 11 yrs on up seemed to be carrying large Buck knives on their belt. Big ones. Never understood that.

commented 2013-01-23 20:52:14 -0500 · Flag

@doors17: “More evidence that if Texas does secede from the union they won’t be missed.”

They sure as hell won’t be missed by Mexico: as I’ve said before, the day Texas secedes from the US, within 72 hours it will be Mexico’s 32nd state . . .

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commented 2013-01-23 20:14:38 -0500 · Flag

Just what we need. More evidence that if Texas does secede from the union they won’t be missed. I live in California, but can I please sign their petition? I would like to help.

commented 2013-01-23 20:04:21 -0500 · Flag

“Whereas in Texas, we have lower taxes, less government, fewer regulations, more jobs and more liberty.”

And more idiots in political office . . .

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commented 2013-01-23 17:56:55 -0500 · Flag

Some say that Texas gun nuts should form up into one large circular firing squad.

commented 2013-01-23 17:42:39 -0500 · Flag

I wonder. Does anyone know if you, with your concealed weapon permit, can carry a concealed weapon into the Texas Attorney General’s office or are you required to “check” it at the door? I’d think, given Texas’s typical GOP mindset, that hypocrisy rules—that the State has no problem with (in fact, encourages) folks carrying their concealed weapons in places like bars and schools and private workplaces but sort of frowns on those guns being carried into places where state officials are conducting the business of poking their noses into every last bit of your intimate lives. (Naturally, I’d guess the state officials would be carrying their own weapons for their “own safety” but wouldn’t want the regular peons—I mean, people—to have access to a loaded weapon while watching the officials carry out “business.”)