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      US on track to set record in 2023 for mass killings after series of shootings

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      After a series of shootings and other attacks, 2023 is on track to be the worst in recent history for mass killings in the US.Mass killings are defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed, not including the shooter or other type of perpetrator. According to data from the Gun Violence Archive, the US is on pace for 60 mass killings this year. There were 31 in 2019, 21 in 2020, 28 in 2021 and 36 in 2022.The US is seeing on average more than one mass killing weekly.As of 7 May 2023, there had been 202 mass shootings – defined by the archive as involving at least four people killed or injured by firearms, excluding the shooter – since the beginning of the year.The incidents have spanned the country, from Chicago to Mississippi and Tennessee to Texas. They have occurred at shopping malls, schools and parties and in countless neighborhoods.They have also sparked a bout of soul-searching in a country where scores of millions of guns are in public hands and there is little political prospect of meaningful gun control of the type common in many other countries.Yet another mass shooting took place in Allen, Texas, on Saturday, leaving eight dead. The gunman was also killed. The shooter opened fire at a shopping mall, spraying bullets before being killed by a police officer.On Sunday, Texas saw a mass killing: a driver plowed his truck into a crowd at a bus stop near a shelter serving migrants in the southern city of Brownsville, killing eight.Mass shootings have attracted the most attention in the US and overseas. No other industrialised country outside war and conflict zones experiences such habitual gun violence in civic life.In Texas, gun laws were repeatedly loosened after mass shootings. It has had 41 mass shootings so far in 2023. It has not even been one year since 19 children and two teachers were killed in a shooting at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, the deadliest shooting in the state and the third-deadliest school shooting in the US.At more than 1m, Texas is also the state with the most registered guns.State lawmakers voiced their outrage at the latest tragedy.A Democratic state senator senator, Roland Gutierrez, said: “Texas lawmakers need to have the political courage to get something done about gun violence. It is sad that this has become our everyday reality. Thanks to the Republican regime that has led Texas for the last 30 years, gun laws are looser than ever.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSheila Jackson Lee represents Texas’s 18th district, which largely covers Houston, in Congress. She said: “I’m just so tired and hurt and devastated by the continuing mass shootings in this state and in this nation … Eight innocent people are dead – dead by gunfire. Guns again.“Of course, I offer my prayers and concerns for those families who are struggling with the loss of their loved ones. But I also ask the question: ‘When are we going to confront the real cause?’ And that is a proliferation of guns, guns, guns.”Joe Biden has said Republicans should back his calls for more gun control measures.After the shooting last year in Uvalde, Biden oversaw a bipartisan gun control bill that enacted some modest proposals. But as the waves of shootings have intensified, he has pleaded with Congress to enact tougher measures such as banning assault weapons. There has been little sign of that plea being taken up.That pattern repeated itself after the Allen shooting.“Such an attack is too shocking to be so familiar,” Biden said on Sunday.“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. I will sign it immediately. We need nothing less to keep our streets safe.” More

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      Your Tuesday Briefing: Texas Reels From Mass Shootings

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      Also, evacuation orders in occupied Ukraine.A memorial to shooting victims outside a shopping mall near Dallas, Texas.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesTexas shaken by mass shootingsThirteen people have been killed in mass shootings in Texas in the past two weeks. The mass murders have fueled a new openness to gun regulation among some Texans, but Republican lawmakers have shown no interest in taking action to address the violence.In fact, Texas has increased access to guns during the past two years even as the state endured more than a dozen mass killings, including a shooting at a school in Uvalde, where a gunman killed 19 children and two adults. The state did away with its permit requirements to carry handguns. It also lowered the age to carry handguns to 18 from 21.While less supportive of stricter gun regulation than Americans as a whole, Texans support some limited gun control measures, polls show. Over the past few years views on guns among Republican voters in Texas have appeared to moderate somewhat.But Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said that there would be no new effort by his administration to limit access to firearms, because it would not work.Recent shootings: On Sunday, a gunman killed eight people in a mall outside Dallas, before the police killed him. The gunman may have espoused white supremacist ideology; authorities are examining a social media profile, rife with hate-filled rants against women and Black people, that they believe belonged to him. A week earlier, five people were killed after they asked their neighbor to stop shooting in his front yard.The national picture: A nonprofit group has counted more than 200 mass shootings in the U.S. this year.Russian shelling damaged this building in the Zaporizhzhia region.Andriy Andriyenko/Associated PressRussia prepares for a counteroffensiveWith heavy fighting expected very soon, Russian officials in some occupied areas of Ukraine have ordered evacuations. But some Ukrainians there are staying, and residents described an atmosphere of confusion, defiance and scarcity.About 70,000 people were expected to move from the Zaporizhzhia region after officials issued evacuation orders for 18 towns and villages. The region is one of the areas along the long front line where Ukraine could try to break through the Russian defenses.But while the evacuation was described as mandatory, there appeared to be little effort to force people to leave. In Zaporizhzhia, in fact, few people appeared to be heeding the orders. More than a dozen people there, and in the Kherson region, told our colleagues that gas stations were running dry, grocery store shelves were emptying and A.T.M.s were out of cash.Fighting: In Zaporizhzhia, there was no indication of a Russian withdrawal, Ukrainian military officials and Western military analysts said. Instead, Russia’s troops are expanding defensive fortifications — a sign that they are digging in for coming battles.Other updates from the war:Russia launched a large wave of attack drones at Kyiv overnight. Ukraine said it had shot all of them down. Russia’s celebrations for Victory Day today have been scaled back because of security concerns. President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to address the nation.Investigators inspected the scene of the deadly hospital fire in Beijing.Kevin Frayer/Getty ImagesChina hospital fire exposes elder care shortfallA fire at a hospital in southern Beijing last month left at least 29 dead, many of them older people with disabilities who had been at the facility for months, and in some cases years. The hospital was not licensed to provide long-term elder care.The tragedy exposed a serious problem: the country’s supply of nursing home beds has not kept pace with its rapidly aging population. The authorities have recognized the urgency of addressing the shortage, but many obstacles remain.The stigma against retirement facilities abounds in a culture that emphasizes children’s duties toward their parents. Public facilities have long waiting lists, and private ones can be prohibitively expensive. In addition, getting a facility licensed to offer elder care in the first place is a complicated bureaucratic process, leading some private companies to operate underground.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificA local police officer said the boat was “overcrowded.” Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt least 22 people, many of them children, died in the Indian state of Kerala when a tourist boat capsized.China’s foreign minister met with the U.S. ambassador to China in Beijing yesterday, a sign of a possible thaw in relations.Other Big StoriesAs Britain’s coronation celebrations ended, there were signs that both the nation and its royal family were preparing for a new era.Israel’s court crisis is at the front line of a longstanding dispute between ultra-Orthodox Jews and those who support religious pluralism and secularism.Floods and landslides have killed more than 400 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. More rain is expected in the coming days.Wildfires have burned almost 1 million acres in Western Canada.Here is King Charles’s official portrait. The photographer had just minutes to capture the image.A Morning ReadCalla Kessler for The New York TimesFor canine experts, an invitation to be a judge at the Westminster Dog Show is an honor and a serious responsibility. In all, more than 2,500 dogs are competing, with the Best in Show prize to be awarded today in New York City.“It’s harder to become a dog judge than a brain surgeon, to tell you the truth,” a veteran judge said.ARTS AND IDEASDancers practiced in Hawaii last month.Brendan George Ko for The New York TimesPreserving the “heartbeat” of HawaiiIn the imaginations of many outside Hawaii, hula may conjure images of coconut bras and cellophane skirts, a misunderstanding perpetuated by pop cultural representations in film and television.But hula is an ancient and often sacred dance, one of the ways Native Hawaiians documented their history, mythology, religion and knowledge. And the Merrie Monarch Festival is hula’s Olympics.For the last 60 years, the festival, held in the sleepy town of Hilo, has helped reclaim Hawaii’s native culture, language and identity. The festivities honor King David Kalakaua, who assumed the throne of Hawaii in 1871, and is credited with reviving many ancient practices, most notably, hula, which he called “the heartbeat of the Hawaiian people.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookRyan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.Lime and habaneros make this saltfish buljol, a Caribbean cod dish, taste spiky and bright.What to WatchIn “Slava Ukraini,” Bernard-Henri Lévy documents the war in the second half of 2022.What to Read“King: A Life” is the first major biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., in decades.ParentingTips to help a teen with insomnia.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Pig food (four letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you tomorrow. — Amelia and JustinP.S. The Times won two Pulitzers for our reporting in Ukraine and on Jeff Bezos.“The Daily” is on the U.S. Supreme Court.We welcome your feedback. You can reach us at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Texas: police name suspect after eight killed by truck plowing into crowd

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      Authorities have publicly identified the driver accused of killing several people after plowing his truck into a crowd that was waiting at a bus stop near a shelter serving migrants in a south Texas city.During a Monday morning news conference, police accused George Alvarez of killing eight people and injuring 10 others about 8.30am on Sunday in Brownsville.Police added that Alvarez was a Brownsville resident and had an “extensive” prior criminal record, including allegations of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and driving while intoxicated.Police also said that Alvarez attempted to leave the scene, but he was held down by several people until police arrived and arrested him.A local judge set bond for Alvarez at $3.6m. He was initially booked with reckless driving but faces additional charges, including manslaughter.Police have maintained that they have not determined whether Alvarez acted intentionally and have been unable to verify reports from witnesses that the driver was shouting anti-immigrant obscenities at the time of the crash.A Venezuelan migrant who escaped the crash said the driver, who killed eight people and injured 10, was shouting that immigrants were invading the US, along with other offensive remarks, Monitor News reported. The Guardian reported a similar witness statement.The majority of those injured and killed were Venezuelan, and police have confirmed that they were all men.The crash occurred outside an overnight shelter in Brownsville, Texas, which is near the state’s border with Mexico. The city’s only overnight shelter hosts unhoused people and migrants and has been at capacity for two months.Several people died at the scene, said authorities, with the eighth victim dying on Sunday night.According to surveillance video of the crash, the driver of the SUV ran a light and plowed into the waiting crowd at the bus stop.“What we see in the video is that this SUV, a Range Rover, just ran the light that was about a hundred feet away and just went through the people who were sitting there in the bus stop,” the shelter’s director, Victor Maldonado, told the media.As of Monday morning, the driver’s identity has not been released by authorities. Officials obtained a blood sample of the driver to check for possible intoxicants, but the results of those tests have also not been released, police said on Monday.Alvarez was reportedly being uncooperative and provided different names to authorities, delaying the public release of his identity, police said.The truck killings came four days before Title 42 was set to expire. Title 42 was a Covid-era policy that allowed for the expulsion of migrants.Days before the crash, the US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said that immigration authorities faced “extremely challenging” circumstances along the border with Mexico days as Title 42 is set to end. More

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      Seven dead in Texas after car drives into crowd outside migrant center

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      Seven people have been killed and 10 others were injured after a car plowed into a crowd outside a shelter serving migrants and homeless people in Brownsville, Texas, on Sunday, and investigators believe it may have been intentional, according to authorities.The car careened into the crowd of people who were sitting on the curb at a bus stop near the Ozanam Center at about 8.30am, the police department in Brownsville, which is near Texas’s border with Mexico, said. That came four days before the scheduled expiration of Title 42, the Covid-19 era policy that allows border patrol agents to swiftly expel migrants at the US’s southern border.Shelter director Victor Maldonado told the Associated Press that upon reviewing the shelter’s surveillance footage, he saw an SUV run a light and plow into the crowd of people who were at the bus stop. The majority of those who were injured or killed were Venezuelan men.“What we see in the video is that this SUV, a Range Rover, just ran the light that was about a hundred feet away and just went through the people who were sitting there in the bus stop,” Maldonado said.Police lieutenant Martin Sandoval told the news outlet Valley Central that seven victims died at the scene, and several others were rushed to nearby hospitals.Video footage posted online showed crowds of people at the scene while clothes and other personal items were strewn all over the road. Several people appeared to be tending to an individual who was lying on a grassy area.Sandoval said the driver was arrested and booked on a count of reckless driving. More charges are likely to be filed in what officers suspect may have been an intentional act, Sandoval added.“It can be three factors,” Sandoval told the Associated Press. “It could be intoxication; it could be an accident; or it could be intentional. In order for us to find out exactly what happened, we have to eliminate the other two.”He added that the driver was transported to a nearby hospital for injuries he sustained after the car rolled over and that no passengers were with him.“He’s being very uncooperative at the hospital, but he will be transported to our city jail as soon as he gets released,” said Sandoval, adding that the detained driver had given officers several different names. “Then we’ll fingerprint him and [take a] mug shot, and then we can find his true identity.”Police have also obtained a blood sample from the driver and have submitted it to be tested for possible intoxicants.The Ozanam Center is the only overnight shelter in Brownsville and manages the release of thousands of migrants from federal custody, and it offers free transportation for migrants.“In the last two months, we’ve been getting 250 to 380 a day,” Maldonado told the Associated Press, adding that even though the shelter can hold up to 250 migrants, many who arrive also leave on the same day.“Some of them were on the way to the bus station, because they were on their way to their destination,” he said.Two days earlier, the US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said that immigration authorities faced “extremely challenging” circumstances along the border with Mexico days before the end of asylum restrictions implemented through Title 42 during the Covid-19 pandemic.A surge of Venezuelan migrants through south Texas, particularly in and around the border community of Brownsville, has occurred over the last two weeks for reasons that Mayorkas said were unclear.On Thursday, 4,000 of about 6,000 migrants in border patrol custody in Texas’s Rio Grande valley were Venezuelan. More

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      ‘Spare us your prayers’: Ted Cruz faces backlash after Texas mall shooting kills eight

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      Texas US senator Ted Cruz’s comment Saturday that he was “praying” for families of the eight victims killed in a shooting at a shopping mall in his state has sparked outrage as many critics say the Republican should advocate for meaningful gun control rather than repeatedly invoke prayer after mass, deadly violence.Cruz and other fellow Texas Republicans have faced similar backlash for citing general emotional support, thoughts, prayers, or a combination thereof after the slayings in Allen, Texas, on Saturday.Criticism of Cruz grew several hours after the shooting when he tweeted: “Heidi and I are praying for the families of the victims of the horrific mall shooting in Allen, Texas. We pray also for the broader Collin county community that’s in shock from this tragedy.”Shannon Watts, founder of gun safety group Moms Demand Action, said on Twitter: “YOU helped arm him with guns, ammo and tactical gear. He did exactly what you knew he’d do. Spare us your prayers and talk of justice for a gunman who is … dead”.“The only accountability we can hope for is that gun extremists like you are thrown into the ash heap of history.”Star Trek actor George Takei added: “You’re worse than useless.”Another Twitter user said thoughts and prayers “are nothing but blasphemy and evil”. Yet another quipped: “Have you tried turning the prayer machine off and back on again.”Cruz has received more than $442,000 from organization which support keeping guns as accessible as possible, according to Axios and Open Secrets. He has used language referring to thought and prayers rather than restrictions on guns in reaction to other previous mass shootings in his state.After a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at the Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on 24 May 2022, Cruz commented: “Heidi and I are lifting up in prayer the entire … community during this devastating time and we mourn the lives that were taken by this act of evil. None of us can imagine the anguish the parents in Uvalde are going through. Our hearts go out to them.”In response to a racist shooting at an El Paso Walmart that left 23 dead in August 2019, Cruz similarly said: “Heidi & I are praying for everyone in El Paso. As events continue to unfold, please heed any warnings from local authorities and law enforcement and stay safe. #Pray4ElPaso.”Cruz’s comment on a shooting that left two dead near one of his state’s universities a couple of months later was: “Heidi and I are lifting up in prayer those who were killed and injured in last night’s shooting at an off-campus party at Texas A&M Commerce @tamuc.”Cruz has offered more than prayers in response to certain mass shootings, though, such as commentary on immigration policy. After authorities said that a Mexican national who had previously been deported shot five neighbors to death last month, Cruz tweeted: “Thank you to the brave men and women of law enforcement who worked tirelessly to apprehend this mass murdering illegal alien who killed 5 innocent people. The victims deserve justice. And this monster when convicted deserves the death penalty.”In the hours and days leading up to Saturday’s shooting in Allen, Cruz touted his support of gun rights. Early Saturday afternoon, he retweeted a Senate Republicans post stating: “Ted Cruz’s challenger said he wishes the second amendment wasn’t written. Beto 2.0?”Early on Saturday, Cruz said of declared 2024 challenger Colin Allred, a Democratic congressman: “Wow. This guy wants to represent Texas??” quoting him saying “Would it be better if [the second amendment] had not been written? Of course. But there’s no chance that we’re going to repeal” it.Cruz used googly eyes in his tweet, which referred to the constitutional right for Americans to bear arms.Republican US congressman Keith Self, whose district includes Allen, bristled on Sunday when asked about invoking spirituality after mass shootings like the one a day earlier.Citing law enforcement sources, NBC News and CNN identified the shooter as 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia. NBC News described Garcia as a neo-Nazi sympathizer.“Those are people that don’t believe in an almighty God who is absolutely in control of our lives,” Self told CNN. “I’m a Christian – I believe that he is.”Self went on to argue that the US’s lack of adequate mental health treatment was to blame for mass shootings. And then he said that the country’s focus should be on praying for the Allen victims’ families.Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, also sought to redirect the public conversation about the Allen mall shooting to mental health. Eve“People want a quick solution,” Abbott said on Fox News Sunday. “The long-term solution here is to address the mental health issue.”Abbott’s comment on mental health came after host Shannon Bream noted that a Fox News poll revealed that 80% of participants supported gun control measures, such as raising the minimum age to buy a firearm and mental health checks. Fox News’s viewers are largely Republican.Neither Cruz, Abbott nor Self immediately responded to requests for comment.Despite Texas’s history of mass shootings, Abbott in 2021 signed a law which allowed the state’s residents to legally carry guns without a license or training. Meanwhile, a federal judge last year struck down one of Texas’s few remaining gun restrictions, which barred people younger than 21 from carrying a handgun. More

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      Rep. Colin Allred of Texas Will Challenge Ted Cruz for Senate

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      Mr. Allred, a Democrat and former N.F.L. linebacker, said he would try to unseat Mr. Cruz, who held off Beto O’Rourke in 2018.HOUSTON — Representative Colin Allred, a Dallas-area Democrat who defeated an incumbent Republican to gain his seat in 2018, announced on Wednesday that he would challenge Senator Ted Cruz of Texas next year.In a three-minute video, Mr. Allred, 40, a former civil rights lawyer who played as a linebacker in the N.F.L., presented himself as a bipartisan politician whose working-class upbringing would enable him to overcome the long odds: No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since the 1990s.“We don’t have to be embarrassed by our senator,” he said, after describing Mr. Cruz as someone who “cheered on the mob” during the Capitol riot and who left Texas to go to the resort city of Cancun, Mexico, during the 2021 winter storm and power grid failure that killed hundreds of Texans. “We can get a new one.”Mr. Allred came into office riding a wave of Democratic enthusiasm that nearly unseated Mr. Cruz during his last re-election fight, a 2018 victory over Beto O’Rourke, then a little-known representative from El Paso. Mr. O’Rourke lost by about 2.5 percentage points, a thin margin in the Republican-dominated state.The same year, Mr. Allred defeated Representative Pete Sessions, a Republican, in a Dallas-area district that has since been redrawn to become more favorable for Democrats.Almost from the start, Mr. Allred has shown an ability to attract interest from donors, outraising Mr. Sessions and continuing to demonstrate the kind of strong fund-raising ability that would be necessary in a statewide race in Texas.Mr. Cruz is highly unpopular among Texas Democrats, but he has so far survived all attempts to oust him.Enthusiasm is also low among many Texas Democrats, who watched Mr. O’Rourke lose badly to Gov. Greg Abbott last year despite his well-funded campaign.And Mr. Allred, whose decision to enter the race began emerging in news reports before Wednesday’s announcement, has seen expectations for his campaign set low: The magazine Texas Monthly suggested that he was a “replacement-level candidate.” In other words, as good as any other Democrat but not a star.Nick Maddux, a spokesman for Mr. Cruz’s campaign, described Mr. Allred as a “far-left radical” in a statement on Wednesday. “His voting record is completely out-of-touch with Texas,” he said. “For over a decade, Sen. Cruz has been leading the fight for jobs, freedom, and security in Texas.”Mr. Allred’s announcement video acknowledged that he was a long shot, presenting himself as an underdog who “never knew” his father, and pulled himself up into elite football, law school and Congress. He said he would focus on Texas issues, not divisive cultural ones, discussing rural hospital closures and prescription drug prices in his video.As for Mr. Cruz, he said: “All hat, no cattle.” More

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      Ex-NFL player Colin Allred launches challenge to Ted Cruz for Senate seat

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      The far-right Republican Texas senator Ted Cruz will be challenged for his seat next year by Colin Allred, a former NFL linebacker who launched his campaign on Wednesday with a video referencing the January 6 attack on Congress by Trump supporters Cruz called “peaceful protesters”.“I’ve taken down a lot tougher guys than Ted Cruz,” Allred said.Allred, 40, played college football for Baylor in Texas then played 32 games for the Tennessee Titans between 2007 and 2010. He entered Congress in 2019, a rare Democrat in red Texas. He has increased his majority since.Democrats control the Senate but face a tough elections map in 2024. A pick-up in Texas would be a shock but would boost activists who insist the state is turning towards progressives.On 6 January 2021, Trump supporters urged on by the then president and Republican allies including Cruz attacked Congress in an attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s election win, which Trump baselessly claimed was the result of electoral fraud.In his announcement video, Allred took Cruz to task for being one of 147 Republicans who objected to election results even after the riot, which is now linked to nine deaths including law enforcement suicides, and for confessing to hiding in a closet during the attack.“When I left the NFL,” Allred said, walking on a football field, “I thought my days of putting people on the ground were over. Then, January 6 happened.“I remember hearing the glass breaking and the shouts coming closer. I texted my wife: ‘Whatever happens, I love you.’ Then I took off my jacket and got ready to take on anyone who came through that door.“And Ted Cruz? He cheered on the mob. Then hid in a supply closet when they stormed the Capitol. But that’s Ted for you. All hat, no cattle.”Allred also targeted Cruz for a famous flight to Cancun when Texas fell under a big freeze amid widespread power failures, and for perceived policy failings, before telling his own life story.On Twitter, Allred added: “I’ve taken down a lot tougher guys than Ted Cruz, but I can’t do this without your help.”Now 53, Cruz entered Congress in 2013. In 2016 he ran second to Trump in the Republican presidential primary. Initially a hold-out against the billionaire, who insulted his wife and father, like most of the rest of the party Cruz soon came onside. Paul Manafort, a former Trump aide, has said Trump gave Cruz a rare apology.In the usually collegial Senate, Cruz is famously unpopular. Al Franken, the former Democratic senator from Minnesota, once said: “I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.”In 2018, the last time Cruz ran for re-election, he faced a strong challenge from Beto O’Rourke, a former Democratic congressman. Cruz won by less than three points.Speaking to the Dallas Morning News, Allred said Texas “can’t afford six more years of Ted Cruz”.He added: “The political extremism that we are becoming increasingly known for is a real risk to our business community and our path forward. It’s making some folks say they don’t want to send their kids to school in our state. We can go in a different direction.” More

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      Texas governor decried for ‘disgusting’ rhetoric in wake of mass shooting

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      As he announced a reward for the capture of a 38-year-old Texas man accused of fatally shooting five people after some of them complained about his firing a rifle in his yard, the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, went out of his way to describe Francisco Oropeza and those he allegedly murdered as “illegal immigrants”.The Republican’s words drew ire from immigration advocates, state and federal lawmakers and other politicians as Abbott’s words hewed closely with his track record of using anti-immigrant rhetoric in the wake of mass shootings.They decried Abbott’s rhetoric as dehumanizing and indicative of an attempt to deflect attention from the role Republican lawmakers played in shaping Texas’s lax gun laws that Democrats say have created an unsafe environment for residents.As of Monday, law enforcement authorities had not confirmed the immigration status of the five people killed. The victims, which included a young boy and two women who were shielding children from gunfire, were all from Honduras. Oropeza, who remained at large on Monday morning as federal and local enforcement frantically searched for him, was a Mexican national who had reportedly been previously deported from the US.Political discussions of those facts prompted the local sheriff, Greg Capers of San Jacinto, to say they were irrelevant to investigators.“My heart is with this … boy,” Capers told reporters. “He was in my county, five people died in my county, and that is where my heart is – in my county, protecting my people to the best of our ability.”In his statements, Abbott also noted that he would tell state officials to “alert Operation Lone Star soldiers and troopers to be on the lookout for the criminal and any attempts to flee the country after taking the lives of five people”. The operation, which started in 2021, enabled Abbott to declare a security crisis at Texas’s border with Mexico – where crossings have risen in recent years – and deploy the state’s national guard there.Critics have decried how the operation has cost Texas taxpayers millions of dollars weekly while its participants make arrests that are physically distant from the border, not related to crimes there, and involve law enforcement agencies not directly part of Operation Lone Star, according to reporting from the Texas Tribune, ProPublica and the Marshall Project.Julián Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio who served as secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development before he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, criticized Abbott for using anti-immigrant rhetoric when “five human beings lost their lives”.State senator Roland Gutierrez – a Democratic lawmaker whose district includes Uvalde, where 19 elementary school students and two of their teachers were shot to death by an intruder last year – went on Twitter to call Abbott’s statement a “new low”.Abbott, Gutierrez maintained, continued to “do nothing to keep #Texas safe from #GunViolence”.Gutierrez, who is likely to run against the Republican Ted Cruz for his US Senate seat, told MSNBC’s Alicia Menendez on Sunday that the state’s GOP members were responsible for loosening gun laws, noting that there were more than 20 pieces of gun control legislation that have not moved.“They don’t get to have an immigration narrative today,” Guiterrez said. “They need to own the narrative that they have made this state more dangerous … An undocumented person was able to buy an AR-15 illegally somewhere because of their lax gun laws.”State Republicans have routinely rejected more gun restrictions, including in the wake of a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso that killed 23 and at the Uvalde school. Instead, they have loosened them, despite initially signaling they were open to some restrictions.In 2021, two years after the El Paso shooting, Abbott signed a so-called “constitutional carry” law that allows Texas residents to carry handguns without a license or training.Texas joins more than half the US in allowing the permitless carrying of firearms. In April, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed a law making his state the latest to allow the carrying of concealed firearms without a license or training, less than seven years after a gunman killed 49 people and injured 53 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.Despite calls from the families of Uvalde victims for tougher gun laws, Republican Texas lawmakers have refused to act, and the state’s gun laws have gotten looser. Last August, a federal judge struck down a Texas law that raised the legal age for people to carry handguns from 18 to 21.Those acts came even as a poll commissioned by Fox News, whose viewers are largely Republican, found that American voters favor gun control measures and worry that firearms violence will victimize them.Police recovered an AR-15-style rifle that they say Oropeza used in Friday’s shooting. It is unclear how he obtained it.The Immigration Legal Resource Center tweeted that Abbott’s rhetoric amplified a “specific narrative” rather than focusing on the people involved.The Congressional Hispanic Caucus tweeted that Abbott, by centering the victims’ unconfirmed immigration status, decided to “dehumanize” and “delegitimize” their lives. Congressperson Chuy García of Illinois, one of the caucus’s members, added that Abbott would “take every chance he gets to dehumanize migrants. Even if they were murdered in a mass shooting.”Veronica Escobar, who represents El Paso in Congress, called Abbott’s rhetoric a “disgusting lack of compassion and humanity”. More