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Within the seven years that Greg Abbott has served as governor of Texas, dozens of individuals have been killed in mass shootings throughout the state. In just a few circumstances, his administration has responded to the violence by indicating an openness to tightening the state’s gun legal guidelines.
However not a lot has modified, and people legal guidelines stay a number of the least restrictive in the US.
In Might 2018, in response to shootings in Sutherland Springs and Santa Fe that left a complete of 36 folks lifeless, Mr. Abbott issued a 43-page report calling for extra faculty safety and preparation for “energetic shooters on campus,” amongst different measures.
The Republican governor’s report additionally requested state lawmakers to “examine the opportunity of creating” a so-called purple flag regulation, one that will permit the police to briefly confiscate firearms from folks a decide considers to be a hazard to themselves or to others.
The outcomes of Mr. Abbott’s report included a $1 million merchandise within the state’s finances for the Division of Public Security to advertise protected gun storage, in addition to a state regulation abolishing a cap on the variety of faculty marshals who’re allowed to hold weapons on public faculty campuses.
However, not like Florida, the place state lawmakers handed a purple flag regulation weeks after 17 folks have been fatally shot at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty in 2018, the thought for the same measure in Texas died in a state legislature committee. One purpose was public opposition from Mr. Abbott’s personal lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick.
“Relating to the subject of ‘Pink Flag’ legal guidelines, which was mentioned as we speak within the choose committee, I’ve by no means supported these insurance policies, nor has nearly all of the Texas Senate,” Mr. Patrick stated in a press release in July 2018.
An analogous sample performed out in the summertime of 2019, after a gunman killed 22 folks at a Walmart in El Paso and one other killed seven others and wounded at the least 21 extra in Odessa.
A couple of days after the Odessa bloodbath, Mr. Patrick publicly endorsed increasing the state’s background checks to personal gun gross sales, telling The Dallas Morning Information that he was “keen to take an arrow” from the gun foyer to champion such a measure.
However Mr. Patrick later went quiet on the thought of background checks. And final yr, Mr. Abbott, whose insurance policies have been drifting rightward lately, signed a wide-ranging regulation ending a requirement for Texans to acquire a license to hold handguns. Now, nearly anybody over the age of 21 is allowed to take action.
In a information convention on Wednesday, Mr. Abbott stated that though the gunman who killed 19 kids in Uvalde had no recognized historical past of psychological points, he believed that the world close to the varsity lacked adequate entry to psychological well being care. “We as a state, we as a society, must do a greater job with psychological well being,” he stated.
He didn’t make any particular proposals for laws that will deal with gun violence.
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