Texas governor Greg Abbott dismisses Joe Biden’s gun pledges as ‘show’

‘There is no acceptable way that a president by executive order can infringe upon Second Amendment rights’

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Texas governor Greg Abbott has hit out at Joe Biden’s pledge to take action on gun violence, dismissing the president’s executive actions as “show”.

President Biden announced a range of actions on Thursday that, among other things, aims to stop the sale of so-called “ghost guns” and encourages the adoption of “red-flag” gun laws.

“Gun violence in this country is an epidemic, and it’s an international embarrassment,” Mr Biden said while announcing the raft of new gun-control measures.

But his actions were dismissed as empty by Texas’s Mr Abbott, who suggested the president should tackle complaints about gun crimes that had already taken place rather than attempting to prevent new ones.

“I think that there is no acceptable way that a president by executive order can infringe upon Second Amendment rights or alter Second Amendment rights,” Mr Abbott said in an interview with Fox News Sunday.

“If the president wanted to do something more than show ... if the president really wanted to do something substantively, what he really could do by executive order is to eliminate the backlog of complaints that have already been filed about gun crimes that have taken place.”

The Republican governor’s comments come several days after he took to Twitter to endorse a bill to make Texas into what has been described as a Second Amendment sanctuary state.

He commented:“A bill filed in the Texas House by Representative @JustinaHolland would make Texas a Second Amendment Sanctuary State. It would forbid Texas state agencies & local governments from enforcing new federal gun laws or rules.”

Pressed by Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace on whether he would support any federal gun-control legislation, Mr Abbott replied: “Texans and Americans know they need their Second Amendment rights to defend themselves at a time when the United States government and other governments are doing less to defend our fellow Americans, and that is exactly why we should not have any further limitations of our Second Amendment rights.”