Source: txgunrights.org · last verified 2026-07-22
Everytown for Gun Safety’s latest Texas fact sheet presents a familiar conclusion: Texas suffers from ‘gun violence’ because state lawmakers have not adopted the organization’s preferred gun-control agenda. However, a closer review of the numbers suggests that this claim is not supported by the data. The category of ‘gun violence’ is far broader than many readers may realize, combining firearm suicides, criminal homicides, shootings by police, accidental shootings, undetermined deaths, nonfatal assaults, suicide attempts, and other firearm-related injuries under one label.
We agree with Texas Gun Rights that Everytown’s framing of the issue is misleading. The fact that 58% of firearm deaths in Texas are suicides, while 39% are homicides, suggests that the problem is more complex than a simple matter of gun control. Furthermore, Texas’s ranking of 30th in the nation for overall firearm deaths and injuries, 31st for firearm suicides and suicide attempts, 23rd for firearm homicides and assaults, and 28th for estimated societal cost per resident, does not support the claim that the state is uniquely dangerous due to its gun laws.
It’s also worth noting that the sharpest increase in firearm deaths occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time of unprecedented social disruption and economic instability. This suggests that the relationship between gun laws and homicide is not as simple as Everytown’s rhetoric suggests. We believe that a serious analysis of the issue must consider a range of factors, including criminal activity, policing, prosecution, poverty, urban concentration, repeat offenders, demographic differences, and the unusual disruptions of 2020 and 2021.
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