In surprise move days after Allen mall shooting, Texas House panel OKs bill raising age to buy semi-automatic rifles

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In a shock transfer days after the Allen mall capturing and hours earlier than a key legislative deadline, a Texas Home committee superior a invoice Monday that will elevate the minimal age to buy sure semi-automatic rifles.

The invoice faces an uphill climb to turning into state regulation, however the vote marked a milestone for the proposal that family of Uvalde capturing victims have been pushing for months.

A number of family of kids who have been killed within the Robb Elementary Faculty capturing final yr sobbed when the committee voted 8-5 to ship the invoice to the Home ground. Republican state Reps. Sam Harless and Justin Holland joined with Democrats on the Home Group Security Choose Committee to advance the invoice.

Lower than two hours earlier, a few of the family of Uvalde victims had urged the committee chair, Rep. Ryan Guillen. R-Rio Grande, to provide Home Invoice 2744 a vote earlier than a key deadline Monday.

“One yr in the past right this moment, my daughter had her communion. A few month later, she was buried in that very same gown,” Javier Cazares, whose 9-year-old daughter Jacklyn was killed within the Uvalde capturing, mentioned throughout an emotional press convention. “Mr. Guillen, and anyone else who’s stopping this invoice from passing, unhappy to say however extra blood might be in your fingers.”

Monday marks the final day Home payments will be voted out of committee within the decrease chamber. Home payments that don’t meet that deadline face more and more tough odds of turning into regulation, although there are some avenues by which measures left in committees might be revived.

HB 2744, filed by Democratic Rep. Tracy King, whose district consists of Uvalde, was debated earlier than the Home choose committee final month throughout a listening to by which family of Uvalde victims shared emotional accounts of lives torn asunder by gun violence.

Monday’s legislative deadline falls two days after a gunman in Allen, a Dallas suburb of about 100,000 folks, killed eight customers at an out of doors mall with an AR-15-style rifle — the identical kind of weapon utilized by the gunman in Uvalde, the place killed 19 youngsters and two lecturers have been killed.

As a result of the person recognized because the gunman in Allen was 33, elevating the age restrict for semi-automatic rifle purchases seemingly wouldn’t have stored him from buying such a weapon. However Saturday’s capturing renewed requires tightening some gun legal guidelines in a state whose lawmakers have loosened firearm restrictions regardless of repeated mass shootings.

On Sunday, after the Allen capturing, Gov. Greg Abbott once more doubled down on the GOP’s resistance to gun management laws.

Home Speaker Dade Phelan mentioned earlier this yr that he doesn’t consider HB 2744 has the votes to cross the chamber, however that he received’t stand in the best way of it being debated. An analogous invoice within the Senate has not but obtained a listening to. And Abbott has mentioned the regulation wouldn’t be constitutional.

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