Gun Laws

State legislators and gun rights advocates are calling on the State Fair of Texas to rescind its new policy banning firearms, implemented nearly a year after a shooting at the fair injured three.

“I’m angry, and I’m not going to give up,” Nikki Cross, the mother of 10-year-old Uvalde shooting victim Uziyah, recently told a group of gun control advocates.

The legislation would raise the minimum age for purchasing certain firearms but likely wouldn’t have been a hindrance to the Allen gunman obtaining a weapon. The bill still faces an uphill climb in the Legislature.

The legislation is a GOP priority following the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde. But some Texas Democrats oppose the measure, arguing more guns in schools isn’t a logical solution.

The author of a bill to raise the minimum age to buy a semiautomatic gun said he would have voted “no” to a similar bill last session. The shooting in Uvalde changed his mind.

In previously unreleased interviews, police who responded to the Robb Elementary shooting told investigators they were cowed by the shooter’s military-style rifle. This drove their decision to wait for a Border Patrol SWAT team to engage him, which took more than an hour.

Under Senate Bill 23, all felonies involving a gun would incur a mandatory 10-year prison sentence. It’s meant to curb crime, despite the lack of correlation between harsher sentences and crime rates.

Lawmakers use last-minute pitches to rectify older legislation, but also do a bit of political grandstanding.

Under Texas law, most adults under the age of 21 can't own a handgun. But the state's top law enforcement agency will no longer enforce that law after a recent court ruling.

The families are pushing for a series of bills that range from ending qualified immunity to changing age limits to purchase a semi-automatic rifle. The group also wants to be able to sue the state over the botched police response.