Texas Senate Democrats call for special session for gun control laws

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The Texas Senate Democratic Caucus is urging Gov. Greg Abbott to call an emergency special legislative session to think about a wide range of gun restrictions and security measures within the wake of a mass college capturing in Uvalde that left 19 kids and two adults useless this week.

In a letter launched Saturday morning, all 13 Senate Democrats demanded lawmakers move laws that raises the minimal age to buy a firearm from 18 to 21 years outdated. The Uvalde gunman was 18 and had bought two AR-style rifles which he used within the assault.

The caucus can be calling for common background checks for all firearm gross sales, “red flag” laws that permit a choose to quickly take away firearms from people who find themselves thought of an imminent menace to themselves or others, a “cooling off period” for the acquisition of a firearm and laws on excessive capability magazines for residents.

“Texas has suffered more mass shootings over the past decade than any other state. In Sutherland Springs, 26 people died. At Santa Fe High School outside Houston, 10 people died. In El Paso, 23 people died at a Walmart. Seven people died in Midland-Odessa,” the letter reads. “After each of these mass killings, you have held press conferences and roundtables promising things would change. After the slaughter of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, those broken promises have never rung more hollow. The time to take real action is now.”

Such laws are unlikely to realize traction within the Republican-controlled Legislature, which has a observe document of favoring laws that loosens gun restrictions. Only the governor has the facility to call lawmakers again right into a special session for emergency work.

Asked a couple of special session at a Friday press convention in Uvalde, Abbott mentioned “all options are on the table” including that he believed laws would finally be handed to handle this week’s horrors. However, he recommended laws could be extra tailor-made towards addressing psychological well being, relatively than gun control.

“You can expect robust discussion and my hope is laws are passed, that I will sign, addressing health care in this state,” he mentioned, “That status quo is unacceptable. This crime is unacceptable. We’re not going to be here and do nothing about it.”

He resisted the concept of accelerating the age to buy a firearm, saying that since Texas turned a state, 18-year-olds have been in a position to purchase a gun.

He additionally dismissed common background checks saying current background examine insurance policies didn’t stop the Santa Fe and Sutherland Springs shootings, which each occurred whereas he has been in workplace.

“If everyone wants to seize upon a particular strategy and say that’s the golden strategy right there, look at what happened in the Santa Fe shooting,” he mentioned. “A background check had no relevance because the shooter took the gun from his parents…Anyone who suggests we should focus on background checks as opposed to mental health, I suggest is mistaken.”

Since the bloodbath at Robb Elementary School, the governor’s feedback about potential options have centered round rising psychological well being companies, relatively than limiting entry to firearms.

But within the letter, Senate Democrats criticized the governor for blaming a “broken mental health care system – that you and other state leaders continue to underfund severely.”

“We need evidence-based, common sense gun safety laws. Without a doubt, if at least some of the measures noted above had been passed since 2018, then many lives could have been saved,” the caucus wrote.

Abbott’s workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark concerning the letter.

After the Santa Fe college capturing in 2018, Abbott launched a wide range of suggestions to handle college security, together with a call to the Legislature to think about a “red flag” regulation.

At the time, Abbott claimed in his plan to enhance college security that comparable protecting orders limiting gun possession may have prevented the mass shootings in Sutherland Springs, southeast of San Antonio, and Parkland, Florida.

But Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and gun rights activists pushed again and the proposal died.

By the tip of the 2019 legislative session Abbott signed a bundle of faculty security measures that primarily centered on increasing psychological well being sources and “hardening school buildings.” He expanded the variety of college employees who may have a firearm on college grounds.

When he signed that laws on the finish of the 2019 session, reporters requested if he nonetheless supported a “red flag” regulation.

Abbott mentioned such a measure wasn’t essential in Texas “right now.”

On Friday, Roland Gutierrez, the Democratic state senator who represents Uvalde, interrupted Abbott’s press convention by strolling to the entrance of the auditorium and urged the governor to convey lawmakers again for three weeks.

“We have to do something, man,” he said to Abbott, the second Democratic politician to interrupt a press conference this week. “Just call us again.”

In the hours after the capturing on Tuesday, Gutierrez informed the Texas Tribune that the state wanted to make it tougher to acquire a firearm, particularly the gun utilized by the shooter, an AR-15, which he known as a “weapon of mass destruction.”

“There’s not a hunter in Texas that utilizes these kinds of weapons,” he mentioned. “And so I’m not saying let’s take those kinds of weapons away, I’m saying that we should have some greater accessibility restrictions …When you’ve got an 18-year-old kid getting his hands on this kind of weaponry, it just makes no sense to me.”