Governor’s meeting tackles school safety
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott met Wednesday with representatives of a guncontrol group and the Texas State Rifle Association for more discussions about school safety after the shooting that killed 10 people near Houston.
Abbott, a Republican who has worked to expand gun rights in the state, called for the meetings as he weighs ideas for possible legislative action or executive orders. Two dozen groups were invited to the session, which included conversations on monitoring students’ mental health.
The governor has said he wants to keep guns away from people “who would try to murder our children.” But critics say Texas isn’t serious about changing its gun-loving culture. A group of student activists wrote the governor a letter Wednesday, criticizing his support of the National Rifle Association and calling for expanded background checks on gun purchases and other gun-control measures.
“We are dying on your watch. What will you do about it?” said the letter signed by students who identified themselves as organizers of Texas student gun-control marches held after the February shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla.
The meetings at the state Capitol were organized after Friday’s mass shooting at a high school in Santa Fe. Eight students and two teachers were killed and more than a dozen wounded.
Wednesday’s discussion included representatives of Texas Gun Sense, which has said it will press for tougher background checks for gun sales and “red flag” laws that keep guns away from people deemed a danger to themselves or others.
The governor has signed bills in recent years that reduced the cost and training to get a handgun license and allowed the state’s 1.2 million license holders to openly carry their weapons in public. Texas also allows rifles to be openly carried in public.
Police have said the 17-year-old suspect in the Santa Fe shooting used his father’s shotgun and .38-caliber handgun.
Texas allows authorities to deny handgun licenses based on a person’s mental health history and to seize weapons from people determined to be in a mental crisis in some circumstances. But mental health history information is up to the applicant to provide and is not related to the purchase of a gun.