8 killed while shopping in Texas

On Saturday, a gunman fatally shot eight people, including children, at an outlet mall in the Dallas suburb of Allen before he was killed by a nearby police officer responding to an unrelated call. Authorities have identified the attacker as 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia.

The gunman used an AR-15-style rifle in the attack and was wearing tactical gear, President Biden said in a statement. What motivated Garcia to open fire on innocent people shopping on a Saturday afternoon isn’t yet known, but police are investigating his connections to white supremacist ideology. According to law enforcement, Garcia had consumed and posted white supremacist and neo-Nazi content online.

Social media’s role: Gruesome images of the victims were shared widely on Twitter following the shooting, renewing the debate over whether media companies should show Americans the visceral impacts of gun violence on human bodies. News publishers have typically avoided showing graphic images but have made exceptions in some cases (for example, by publishing the photo of a girl suffering from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War).

How politicians responded to another American tragedy:

• Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott cited mental health as the root cause of mass shootings. “People want a quick solution. The long-term solution here is to address the mental health issue,” he said. Critics pointed out Abbott cut $211 million of funding for the state agency that oversees mental health services last year.
• Democrats bashed Republican inaction on gun reform, and President Biden called once again for a ban on assault-style weapons, which are used in many of the deadliest mass shootings, the WSJ reported.

Global perspective: In Serbia, where 17 people were killed in two mass shootings last week, the president called for an “almost complete disarmament” and offered one month of amnesty for gun owners to hand over their illegal weapons, according to the NYT. Serbia has the third-highest gun ownership rate in the world, with 39 firearms per 100 people. The US is No. 1 with 121 per 100 people.

Also in Texas this weekend: Seven people were killed at a bus stop in the border city of Brownsville after they were hit by a Land Rover. Police have taken the vehicle’s driver, identified as a Hispanic man, into custody, but they don’t know yet whether the act was intentional.