Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke is set to mount a fresh attack on Gov. Greg Abbott by accusing the Republican incumbent of failing to protect the state’s children during a town hall in Dallas on Wednesday.
O’Rourke’s campaign said he will reveal a plan for safeguarding kids during the event, which is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at a location to be announced on Tuesday.
The town hall comes in the aftermath of the school massacre in the South Texas city of Uvalde, where 19 children and two teachers were killed on Tuesday. The 18-year-old gunman, armed with an AR-15-style rifle, barricaded himself in a fourth grade classroom at Robb Elementary School for more than an hour while law enforcement waited to breach the room.
It is the state’s deadliest school shooting and the nation’s deadliest since 20 children and six adults were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.
O’Rourke appears prepared to lob a range of criticisms at Abbott when he speaks Wednesday.
“On Abbott’s watch, Texas has experienced six mass shootings, hundreds of kids in Texas’ worsening foster care system have died or been trafficked in state care, and the state’s deadly power grid failure left children to freeze to death,” his campaign announcement says. “Additionally, Texas leads the nation in the number of children living in poverty, as well as the number of uninsured children who are unable to see a doctor or receive mental health care of any kind.”
O’Rourke, who his team said visited victims’ families, confronted Abbott last Wednesday during a news conference at Uvalde High School. O’Rourke approached the stage as the governor passed a microphone to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
“The time to stop the next shooting is right now, and you are doing nothing,” O’Rourke said.
O’Rourke famously said in 2019 that he would support a mandatory assault weapon buyback program.
“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” O’Rourke said during a debate in Houston shortly after a mass shooting at a Walmart in his hometown of El Paso claimed 23 lives. At the time, he was running in a crowded Democratic primary for the presidential nomination.
In response to O’Rourke’s interruption last week, Abbott, hailed as a staunch supporter of gun rights, touted achievements in the 2019 legislative session to harden school campuses, make mental health training a part of continuing education for teachers and remove the cap on the allotted number of school employees who could arm themselves as part of the “school marshals” program. That legislative session was the first following the 2017 shooting at a Sutherland Springs church that left 26 dead and the 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School that killed 10 people.
But Abbott also tossed several of his own proposals including a law that would require gun owners to report lost or stolen weapons and a “red flag” law that would allow for taking guns from people deemed a threat.
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