Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
After Shooting Near Dallas, Texas Politicians Focus On Mental Health, Not Guns
Dallas Morning News: No Gun Control After Allen Mall Mass Shooting, Gov. Abbott Tells Fox News
Gov. Greg Abbott rejected the need for gun control and instead emphasized the importance of mental health funding in an interview on Sunday about the mass shooting at an Allen shopping mall. Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream presented the governor with a recent poll that found overwhelming support for expanding gun buyer background checks, raising the age to buy a firearm and flagging people who are a danger to themselves. (Morris, 5/7)
The Texas Tribune: Texas Leaders Focus On Mental Health, Not Guns, After Allen Shooting
U.S. Rep. Keith Self, a Republican who represents Allen, also emphasized mental health as a solution to gun violence. In an interview with CNN, Self said “many of these situations are based on” the closures of mental health institutions. (Dey and Fechter, 5/7)
The New York Times: After Mass Killings In Texas, Frustration But No Action On Guns
After months of pleading for more gun control measures, a Democrat who represents Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children died in a mass shooting, was told by the Republican leader of the State Senate to stop bringing up gun legislation or be barred from speaking at all. In the State House, Republican members talked and joked among themselves as another Democrat, Representative Jarvis Johnson of Houston, rose to discuss gun control. “This is not a joke — this is real,” he shouted from the lectern at his colleagues on Friday. “Children every day are dying.” (Goodman, Goldman, Sandoval and Montgomery, 5/7)
The Texas Tribune and ProPublica: Decades Of Failed Gun Control Bills Have Followed Texas Mass Shootings
It has become a mournful pattern. Following mass shootings, lawmakers in many states have taken stock of what happened and voted to approve gun control legislation to try to prevent additional bloodshed. In Colorado, the Legislature passed universal background checks in 2013 after a shooter at an Aurora movie theater killed 12 people. After 58 people were shot dead during a 2017 concert in Las Vegas, the Nevada Legislature passed a red flag law that allows a judge to order that weapons be taken from people who are deemed a threat. And in Florida in 2018, then-Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill that raised the minimum age to buy a firearm to 21 after a teenager with a semi-automatic rifle opened fire at a Parkland high school, killing 17 people. But not in Texas. (Priest and Trevizo, 2/16)
Also —
Politico: Biden Says He Would Sign Gun Legislation Immediately If He Could
President Joe Biden on Sunday called on Congress to pass new gun control legislation and said he would “sign it immediately,” in the wake of a shooting in Allen, Texas, that left at least eight dead and seven injured. “Too many families have empty chairs at their dinner tables. Republican Members of Congress cannot continue to meet this epidemic with a shrug. Tweeted thoughts and prayers are not enough,” Biden said in a statement. “Once again I ask Congress to send me a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Enacting universal background checks. Requiring safe storage. Ending immunity for gun manufacturers.” (Garrity, 5/7)
In related news about inequality and violence —
Newsweek: High Crime In Republican Cities Fueled By Guns, Inequality
Republican mayors rejected progressive criminal justice reforms embraced by their Democratic counterparts, but factors such as inequality and guns are still driving crime in larger conservative cities, experts told Newsweek. ... However, a city's partisan lean generally does not necessarily correlate with its crime rate, according to data compiled by Newsweek. While cities like Chicago and Philadelphia indeed have higher crime rates than other cities, places like New York City or Los Angeles, frequently cast as crime-ridden by Republicans, have crime rates on par or lower than many cities led by Republicans. (Stanton, 5/8)
USA Today: How Anti-Poverty Programs Help Close Rich, Poor Gap In Child Health
Generous anti-poverty programs may help narrow gaps in mental health and brain development between children living in low- versus high-income households, a new study finds. The analysis, published in Nature Communications, used data on 10,000 children ages 9 to 11 across 17 states and measured associations between cash assistance programs, Medicaid expansion, and hippocampal volume of children living in high- and low-income families. The hippocampus is a part of the brain that plays a crucial role in memory, learning and emotion. Lower volume, or smaller size of the hippocampus, is linked to cognitive problems. (Hassanein, 5/8)
The Hill: These Are The 10 Safest States In The US, Data Shows
Which states in the U.S. are safest? U.S. News and World Report recently revealed the 10 states that are safest in regards to occurrences of both violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents using data from the FBI.As explained by the FBI, violent crimes include murder, robbery, aggravated assault and sexual assault. Property crime includes events like burglary and motor vehicle theft. U.S. News explains the data shows that while violent crime rose 4.6% between 2019 and 2020, property crime dropped 8.1%. (Falcon, 5/7)
