Morning Joe highlighted the editiorial in the Dallas Morning News calling for Greg Abbott to do something about the state's gun violence, and Abbott's statement that it was "an unspeakable tragedy."
We tell you that it was not unspeakable, and that the people of Texas need you to speak to it and its cause. There is nothing conservative about refusing to acknowledge evidence or give voice to the true nature of a problem. You must speak to the terrible imbalance that you and Republican leaders have created between the individual liberty of nearly unrestricted ownership of the most powerful rifles and guns versus the increasing decline in society's ability to function without constant fear of violent death.
This has to stop. You cannot say this is unspeakable tragedy and move on. A leader must have the courage to speak. You must look at this horror, at the devastation wrought on these people, and you must summon the will to act to change the laws that have put us in this terrible place.
"And you know what he and other Republicans would say to that. You know what he would say. He would say, mental health, mental health, look over here. What is he doing for mental health, by the way?" Mika Brzezinski said.
"Nobody believes it anymore," Joe Scarborough said.
"Look at funding in Texas for mental health. Compare it to other states. I'm sure it's near the bottom or close to the bottom. I mean, there's always this talk about mental health.
"Any time you corner somebody in a debate about weapons of war and how little children are being slaughtered, how people are being -- worshippers are being slaughtered in churches, in synagogues, at country music festivals, at shopping malls, and they have nowhere to go, they go, 'mental health, mental health,' ignoring the fact that there are mental health problems in London. There are mental health problems in Paris. There are mental health problems across Europe. But the United States, far and beyond any other industrialized country, any other western country, the numbers are staggeringly high here compared to everywhere else, where they have as many mental problems as the United States does.
"You have a group of migrants being run down and killed. Look at this, U.S. has, by far, the highest child and teen firearm mortality rate among peer countries. Our little children are being slaughtered. Greg Abbott has nothing to say about it. He just wants to change the subject. But after Greg Abbott cynically, cruelly looked at a rampage inside of a home, where children -- a child and his mother and family was slaughtered by an AR-15, and, yes, an illegal immigrant -- the question is, how did he get that AR-15? -- the governor cynically and cruelly focused on the immigration status of these poor people and that little boy that were slaughtered and called them illegal immigrants. Right off the top. Just inhumane. He wanted to focus on that, illegal immigrants. so is it any surprise that we have migrants being run over, with this sort of lack of leadership, this sort of cynicism, the hatred in Texas?
"Is it any surprise that we have migrants on Sunday mornings, some of them probably going to church, getting run over while they're waiting for a bus? Who are we that we have a neo-nazi sympathizer, possible white supremacist going to malls to gun down other people? I mean, this is -- there is a sickness in the state of Texas, and that sickness starts at the very top with Greg Abbott, who refuses to protect little children in the state of Texas, whether it's at school or whether it's at church or whether it's at shopping malls."
