Austin, TX
Repeated Theft Attempts Expose Weak Security at Austin Gun Store
Austin Police Department officers arrested three suspects, all under the age of 18, in connection with a series of shootings, stolen vehicles, and other violent crimes that unfolded across Austin, Texas, and nearby Manor on May 16 and May 17. According to court records obtained by CBS Austin, the suspects allegedly stole a 9mm Glock pistol from Central Texas Gun Works, a high-profile gun store in Austin, hours before carrying out the 12 shootings, which injured four people, struck homes and vehicles, and damaged fire department property.
The store’s owner, Michael Cargill — a well-known gun rights advocate and the plaintiff behind the Supreme Court’s landmark Garland v. Cargill decision that struck down the federal bump stock ban — denies that the pistol stolen from his store was used in the shootings, though police say they recovered 9mm casings from the crime scenes.
Regardless, the theft draws attention to Central Texas Gun Works’ security measures, as Cargill himself admitted that one of the shooting spree suspects had attempted to rob the store multiple times in recent months, as discussed below.
Thefts from Central Texas Gun Works
In public statements following the shootings, Cargill repeatedly blamed local prosecutors for releasing the juvenile suspects after an earlier gun theft from his store in January. But his own comments also reveal security failures that allowed the same suspects who had tried to steal firearms at Central Texas Gun Works multiple times before escaping with one.
According to Cargill, one of the shooting spree suspects had attempted to steal guns from Central Texas Gun Works on four previous occasions, including most recently in January, when he asked to examine a gun and then ran out of the store with it. Cargill said he personally chased the suspect onto a city bus, stopped the bus from leaving, and had the driver lock the doors until police arrived. After cornering the suspect on the crowded bus, Cargill alleges that he told the teen, “If you pull out this gun on the back of this bus, you better think twice about what you’re doing. Because if you do, we will both die on this bus before I let you off this bus.”
Cargill lamented that Texas state law only allows a person to use deadly force against a person stealing a firearm at night, but not during the day.
Despite prior theft attempts, Cargill also acknowledged to reporters that customers are not required to show identification before handling firearms inside the store. Cargill stated that he and his employees only check a person’s ID “once they’re purchasing a firearm.” When answering questions from reporters, Cargill said that if someone asked to look at a gun, they wouldn’t have to show ID — at least “not initially.” In other words, according to Cargill, individuals could walk into the store, request a firearm, and physically handle it before any identity verification occurred.
Even after the same suspect had allegedly targeted the store multiple times, no additional safeguards appeared to be in place to prevent someone from simply grabbing a firearm and fleeing the building. During another interview, Cargill said the suspect walked in “at the perfect time” when Cargill was teaching a class and another employee was “doing something” and “ask[ed] to look at a firearm,” then “boom, dart[ed] out the front door.”
minimal security requirements
The incident highlights broader concerns about gun dealer security practices and the lack of meaningful federal requirements governing how guns are displayed, handled, or secured inside retail gun stores, despite thousands of firearms being lost or stolen from dealers every year. Unlike pharmacies, jewelry stores, dispensaries, or even some electronics retailers — businesses that often employ controlled-entry systems, tethered merchandise, locked displays, or mandatory identification procedures for potential customers — gun dealers face relatively limited federal security requirements despite selling lethal weapons.
For its part, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s trade association, lobbies against store security requirements, arguing that they are too “costly” and “burdensome” for dealers.
Cargill’s own statements suggest his store relied heavily on reactive measures, such as surveillance cameras and armed pursuit after thefts occurred, rather than preventative barriers designed to stop unauthorized individuals from physically obtaining firearms in the first place. Instead of addressing the security failures that made his gun store an easy target, Cargill argued that the Texas legislature needs to loosen gun laws to allow gun store owners “to use deadly force for theft of a firearm during the daytime. We would have no problem putting them on the escalator and sending them to Jesus.”
Following media reports linking the stolen firearm to Central Texas Gun Works, Cargill also threatened legal action against journalists and local news outlets that reported the gun allegedly used in the shootings came from his store. In a post on X, Cargill wrote that his attorneys were “preparing paperwork to go after every single person and media outlet” that reported the connection, calling the coverage “#Defamation.” The post included an image styled after a movie poster with Cargill standing near his store and the words “OWNER. LEADER. PROTECTOR.”
Cargill’s comments reflect a broader pattern within the firearms industry: When guns are stolen and later used in crimes, responsibility is often placed on prosecutors, courts, or the individuals who pulled the trigger, but far less attention is paid to the security failures that allowed firearms to leave retail stores in the first place.
FILE – LinkedIn logos are displayed on an iPhone and computer screen. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)
AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas Attorney General’s office has opened an investigation into LinkedIn over allegations that the professional networking platform misleads consumers with advertising and profiting from misleading or fake job listings, otherwise known as “ghost jobs.”
LinkedIn investigation
In this photo illustration a Linkedin logo seen displayed on a mobile phone. (Photo Illustration by Stanislav Kogiku/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
What we know:
Texas announced on Tuesday it has issued a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) seeking documents, data and internal communications related to LinkedIn’s advertising, marketing, job listing verification practices and its Premium subscription services.
The investigation centers on whether LinkedIn violated Texas’ consumer protection laws by promoting paid subscription services while allegedly failing to disclose that some job listings on the platform may not actually be representative of hiring opportunities.
What is a ‘ghost job’?
An image of a woman holding a cell phone in front of a LinkedIn logo displayed on a computer screen. On Tuesday, January 12, 2021, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Dig deeper:
LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft and the world’s largest professional networking platform, with more than 1 billion registered users worldwide.
A “ghost job” generally refers to a position advertised online that either is no longer available or that an employer has no immediate intention of filling. The attorney general’s office cited independent studies estimating that ghost jobs account for between one-fifth and one-third of online job postings.
Texas AG targets Premium Subscription Fees
Photographer: Mark Felix/Bloomberg via Getty Images
What they’re saying:
According to the office of the attorney general, LinkedIn does not independently verify the hiring status of most job listings on its platform. Ken Paxton’s office alleges that the company’s marketing for its Premium subscription services does not disclose that a significant number of postings could be inactive, unfilled or not reflect genuine employment opportunity.
“I will use every resource available to my office to help job-seeking Texans find and secure real employment opportunities,” Paxton said in a statement. “LinkedIn has a duty to provide the services it advertises and ensure that consumers paying for Premium subscriptions are receiving access to legitimate job postings.”
Texas officials said LinkedIn’s Premium Career and Premium Business subscriptions cost about $39.99 and $69.99 per month, respectively, and are marketed to jobseekers looking to improve their employment prospects.
What’s next:
The investigation does not include any formal allegations of wrongdoing, and no lawsuit has been filed.
The Source: Information in this article was provided by the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
Director Kristin Tièche says the seed for her new documentary, The Invisible Mammal, was planted back in 1999, when she was a film student in upstate New York.
“I was sitting at this pub on campus, and I looked up and the sky was just filled with bats,” said Tieche, a native Californian who had never seen a bat before.
“I just thought it was the coolest thing ever,” she said.
These days, such a sight is all but impossible to behold in New York and many other states. A deadly disease called white-nose syndrome is to blame.
The Invisible Mammal follows a team of researchers as they set out to protect bats from the disease, which has emptied entire caves and roosting spots once teaming with life. It’s being screened Tuesday night at AFS Cinema and will be followed by a Q&A.
White-nose syndrome is caused by an invasive fungus found in Europe, likely brought to America on the clothes of a visitor who came to see American bats up close. It kills by starving hibernating bats.
The disease causes bats to “wake up too often during winter and they burn up their fat reserves and die before spring,” said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International.
First detected in New York state in 2006, the disease steadily spread across the continent, inflicting catastrophic damage on bat colonies in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic and Midwest. In some parts of the U.S. and Canada, white-nose has wiped out over 90% of bat populations. While the disease exists in Texas, it has not proved as destructive so far.
When it appeared in California in 2019, Tièche thought back to that night decades before when she saw her first bat flight.
“I knew at that moment that it was time to launch this film project,” she said.
The result is a nonnarrated documentary that follows researchers and conservationists across the country, as they protect bats and study ways to battle white-nose syndrome.
Its primary focus is Frick and the team of scientists behind the Fat Bat Project, an initiative started in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that aims to keep bats well fed around their winter hibernation.
“The idea was could we help bats get fat in the fall and also help them recover their body condition in the spring?” Frick said. “Because we had research that showed that the bats that were surviving tended to be fatter at the start of hibernation.”
Tièche said it was not until she arrived in Michigan to shoot that she realized the team of scientists working on the Fat Bat Project was comprised entirely of women.
“I knew at that point that I also was going to tell the story of women in science,” she said.
White-nose exists in Texas, but the colonies of Mexican free-tailed bats so celebrated in the Hill Country are at lower risk of death. That’s largely because they do not hibernate in the same way some other species do, and insect meals are available in Central Texas deeper into the winter months.
Still, Austin’s Congress Avenue bat bridge makes an appearance in the documentary. The film also opens and closes with immersive scenes — filmed by Austin wildlife cinematographer Skip Hobbie — of bats flying out of the Bracken Cave Preserve, home to the world’s largest bat colony.
Courtesy of Kristin Tièchei
“I told him [Hobbie] I was hoping for people to fall in love with bats when they watch,” Tièche said. “You protect what you love.”
White-nose syndrome continues to decimate bats as it spreads, but there’s reason for cautious optimism. Some species that were nearly wiped out in the Northeastern states are beginning to show modest recovery, Frick said, though it is not fully clear why.
She said the Fat Bat Project, which has expanded across the Northeast and into Texas, is also showing promise as one tool of many that could stave off total population collapse in some areas.
The Invisible Mammal is screening at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, July 14, at AFS Cinema. It will be followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Kristin Tièche, producer Matthew Podolsky, cinematographer Skip Hobbie and Winifred Frick of Bat Conservation International.
Brandywine Realty Trust sold 405 Colorado Street in Downtown Austin for $151 million.
Jerry Sweeney, Brandywine’s CEO, discussed how the company was looking to offload somewhere between $250 million and $300 million of its portfolio earlier this year, according to the Austin Business Journal. Earlier this year, the building was billed as 100 percent leased. Houston-based Hines announced that its real estate assets investment arm, Hines Global Income Trust, purchased the building in a statement published Monday. The sale price was disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The Class-AA office property was completed in 2021, and features 206,000 square feet of office space across 25 stories. Hines paid around $733 per square foot for the building. Tenants at the building include JP Morgan Chase, Bain & Company and AllianceBernstein. Hines Global reports that as of May 2026, it controlled $6.4 billion in gross asset value. The statement from Hines is explicit in their reasoning for acquiring the property: Alfonso Mark, Hines’ global co-head of investment management said in the statement that the company believes that fully leased trophy office buildings are driving recovery in the United States’ office market.
Philadelphia-based Brandywine will still maintain a notable presence in Austin. The Uptown ATX development close to Austin’s second downtown, The Domain, is still receiving a $31 million facelift that’s expected to complete by the end of 2027. Last year, Brandywine stole headlines by snagging Nvidia as a tenant. The six-story, 172,000-square-foot building is getting a shiny new lobby to go with other new amenities. Last year, Brandywine sold Quarry Lake II and Four Barton Skyway, according to the outlet. Quarry Lake II’s 120,600 square feet of office space went to Brick Row Holdings, and Four Barton Skyway went to an unknown buyer.
In the same announcement, Hines confirmed that it had also purchased Wicker Park Commons in Chicago.
— Hunter Cooke
Nvidia takes the cake for Austin’s biggest office lease of 2025
Life after IBM: Brandywine tees up $31M in renovations for 66-acre Austin office campus
Private capital giant Apollo selects Austin as second HQ
Read more
-
Los Angeles, Ca1 hour agoStabbing at Chino Hills liquor store ends in attempted murder arrest
-
Detroit, MI1 hour agoA small group of citizens rally for mental health coverage in Detroit
-
San Francisco, CA2 hours ago1 dead, 2 missing after boat capsizes near Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay
-
Dallas, TX2 hours agoDeath penalty off the table for man accused of beheading Dallas motel manager, prosecutors say
-
Boston, MA2 hours agoChickadee, the popular Mediterranean restaurant in Seaport, is shutting down – The Boston Globe
-
Denver, CO2 hours agoDenver Nuggets 7-Year NBA Veteran Gets Honest On Peyton Watson
-
Seattle, WA2 hours agoTop 25 Seattle Seahawks Going into 2026 NFL Season: #17 Grey Zabel
-
San Diego, CA2 hours agoTijuana earns spot in Little League World Series, hoping third time’s a charm
