Eight gun laws in Texas relaxing restrictions on firearms went into effect on Sunday, the day after several shootings in the state on Saturday left at least 7 people dead and 21 injured.
The state’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a series of gun laws during its session earlier this year, which were signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott (R).
Under the new laws, Texans are now allowed to bring guns into churches, carry guns without a license when evacuating for a natural disaster, and are provided a legal defense if they bring firearms to a place that bans them if they did so unknowingly and leave when asked.
The laws also loosened restrictions on gun storage. School districts are no longer allowed to limit how licensed gun owners store their guns on school parking lots, and landlords cannot include restrictions on gun storage in rent leases.
A gunman fired at random in the cities of Midland and Odessa, Texas on Saturday. The alleged shooter, whom law enforcement described as a white male in his 30s, was killed by the police during the rampage. His motives are currently unknown.
After the deadly shooting in El Paso in early August, Abbott and other Texas Republicans refused to engage with the topic of gun control and blamed the massacre on mental health and video games instead.
Dear Ms Cabrera
Your headlines would be more effectual if a dictionary or thesaurus were consulted.
r c
As if I needed another reason to stay out of Texas.
There is a real chance that anger over this (which is totally a Republican party project) drives people to the polls in 2020. Add in the vote against Trump, and maybe it can make some changes in TX. I doubt the state will go blue completely, but enough new faces in office can whittle away the Republican stranglehold on the state. It would be better for the people of TX for sure, as now they really don’t have a voice (unless they are right wing conservatives, white supremacists, or evangelicals).
The Republicans will deserve all the scorn they get for loosening gun laws in the face of these mass shootings.
But they are affecting, in their own way.
If only these laws had been in effect yesterday, then surely some good guy with a gun would have stopped the shooter before it all took off.