AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Going through renewed requires stricter gun management after a mass capturing close to Dallas, a Republican-led Texas Home committee superior a invoice Monday that may elevate the acquisition age for semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21 despite the fact that the proposal has little or no probability of truly turning into legislation.
The Choose Committee on Neighborhood Security voted 8-5, with two Republicans becoming a member of six Democrats, to advance the invoice to the total Home after protesters’ chants of “Do One thing!” echoed by way of the hallways of the Capitol constructing within the nation’s largest pink state. Some households whose kids had been killed within the assault at Robb Elementary Faculty in Uvalde final 12 months cried following the vote.
The measure is unlikely to grow to be legislation, as Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has beforehand waved off the concept of permitting solely folks 21 or older to buy weapons like these utilized in lots of the nation’s worst mass shootings, together with Texas’. However the invoice even getting and clearing a committee vote was uncommon.
The invoice had languished for weeks previous to the weekend capturing that left eight folks lifeless at Allen Premium Retailers, a sprawling out of doors procuring heart, and it getting a committee vote amounted to one thing of an about-face for Republicans.
Republican state Rep. Ryan Guillen, who chairs the Home Choose Committee on Neighborhood Security, mentioned Monday that he nonetheless believes there’s not sufficient help within the Legislature for the invoice to in the end move. He voted in opposition to the measure leaving his committee, which handed the invoice on what was successfully the final attainable day to so with time operating out earlier than the legislative session ends later this month.
When requested why the invoice was out of the blue arising for a vote after weeks of inaction, Guillen mentioned nothing had modified.
The push to lift the age has been led for months within the Texas Capitol by some households of the 19 kids and two academics who had been killed in Uvalde when an 18-year-old gunman with an AR-style rifle opened fireplace in a fourth-grade classroom.
Mack Segovia, whose stepdaughter, Eliahna, was killed at Robb Elementary, attended the Capitol rally on Monday carrying a shirt with a photograph of her in her softball uniform.
“It occurred once more. And it’s going to occur repeatedly and once more,” Segovia mentioned. “It occurred this weekend in a mall. You’re not protected wherever, wherever we’re at anymore … It’s going to strike once more, we simply don’t know the place.”