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In a surprise move days after the Allen Mall shooting and hours before a key legislative deadline, a Texas House committee on Monday advanced a bill that would raise the minimum age to buy certain semi-automatic rifles.
The bill faces an uphill climb to become state law, but the vote marked a milestone for the proposal that relatives of the Uvalde shooting victims have been pushing for months.
Several relatives of children who were killed in the shooting at Robb Elementary School last year wept as the committee voted 8-5 to send the bill to the House. Republican state representatives Sam Harless and Justin Holland joined with Democrats on the House Select Committee on Community Safety to advance the bill.
Less than two hours earlier, some of the Uvalde victims’ relatives had asked the committee’s chairman, Rep. Ryan Guillen, R-Rio Grande, to give House Bill 2744 a vote before a key deadline on Monday.
“One year ago today, my daughter took communion. About a month later, she was buried in the same dress,” said Javier Cazares, whose 9-year-old daughter Jacklyn was killed in the Uvalde shooting, during an emotional news conference. “Mr. Guillen , and anyone else who prevents this bill from passing, sad to say, but there will be more blood on your hands.”
Monday is the last day House bills can be voted on out of committee in the lower house. House bills that miss that deadline face increasingly difficult odds of becoming law, though there are some avenues through which measures left in committee could be revived .
HB 2744introduced by Democratic Rep. Tracy King, whose district includes Uvalde, was debated before a House select committee last month during a hearing in which relatives of Uvalde victims shared emotional accounts of lives torn apart by armed violence
Monday’s legislative deadline comes two days after a gunman in Allen, a Dallas suburb of about 100,000, killed eight shoppers at an outdoor mall with an AR-15-style rifle, the same type of the weapon used by the gunman in Uvalde, where 19 people. children and two teachers were killed.
Since the man identified as the gunman in Allen was 33 years old, raising the age limit for the purchase of semi-automatic rifles likely would not have prevented him from purchasing that weapon. But Saturday’s shooting renewed calls to tighten some gun laws in a state whose lawmakers have loosened restrictions on firearms despite repeated mass shootings.
On Sunday, after Allen’s shooting, Gov. Greg Abbott again doubled down on GOP resistance to gun control legislation.
House Speaker Dade Phelan said earlier this year that he doesn’t believe HB 2744 has the votes to pass the chamber, but he won’t stop it from being debated. A similar bill in the Senate has yet to receive a hearing. And Abbott has said the law would be unconstitutional.
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