Were El Paso Rep. César Blanco’s Tweets About Gun Violence Accurate?

Our weekly check-in with the Texas Truth-O-Meter.

By Alexandra HartSeptember 11, 2019 10:15 am,

After the mass shootings in Midland-Odessa in late August, Democratic state Rep. César Blanco of El Paso posted a series of four tweets citing gun violence statistics.

Here’s one of them: “Every 3 hours someone is killed with a gun in Texas.”

And another: “In Texas 3,139 people are killed a year with a gun.”

But were those tweets based on facts?

Madlin Mekelburg with Politifact Texas based at the Austin American-Statesman has the answer. She says most of his tweets came from statistics from the Giffords Law Center in San Francisco.

“That’s the source for most of this information, but we were able to verify it through other means as well,” Mekelburg says.

Listen to how Blanco’s claims scored in the player above.

 

Written by Caroline Covington.