New bill doesn’t make it harder to legally buy guns
Texas lawmakers are making it harder for some people to legally buy guns. That sounds like fiction deep in the heart of gun country, but a group of bipartisan — yes, bipartisan — lawmakers are coming together to close another loophole in background checks for gun purchases… sort of.
Of course, they’re not talking about raising the purchase age of assault-style rifles to 21, creating red flag laws or strengthening background checks — all policy changes we support. Nor are they creating a new concept in decreasing gun violence.
The bill aims to help enforce a 2009 law that was meant to keep guns away from people with serious mental health or intellectual disabilities. However, the bill, proposed by Republican state Sen. Joan Huffman, of Houston, is less strict than what the original law intended. The 2009 law required county and district clerks to report all court-ordered mental health hospitalizations to the Texas Department of Public Safety who would forward the info to the FBI’S National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
Elliott Naishtat, the longtime Democratic rep from Austin who authored the law, intended for it to apply to Texans of all ages, but it wasn’t. In the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting May 24, 2022 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead, the Texas Tribune and Propublica discovered mental health hospitalizations of minors weren’t being reported to DPS because of “the way the law was written, vague guidance from the state and conflicts with other Texas laws.”
Huffman’s bill to mandate reporting for minors 16 and over passed unanimously
from committee last week, according to the Texas Tribune. At the hearing, Huffman said the bill is “meant to make the background check more thorough and hence make our communities and schools safer.”
But it’s not enough. The bill hardly closes the loophole because it doesn’t require any such reporting for those under 16. This concession may appease Second Amendment hardliners, but it doesn’t make Texans safer.
Failures in reporting information to NICS have already cost Texans their lives. At least four, and possibly six times, the Air Force failed to report critical information about the Sutherland Springs shooter’s criminal convictions and mental health history to NICS. He was able to legally purchase the assault-style rifle he used in his Nov. 5, 2017 rampage at the small town’s First Baptist Church that left 26 dead and 22 wounded. A federal judge found the service 60 percent liable and awarded $230 million to be split among survivors and families of those killed.
Even with Huffman’s revision, the 2009 bill would not have flagged the Uvalde school shooter who legally purchased the rifles and ammunition he used in the Uvalde School shooting.
Yes, Huffman’s proposal is a step in the right direction, and it brings the state in line with federal mandates, but it’s another example of too little too late.
Bipartisan proposal is a start, but more is needed to flag risks