In Shift, Texas House Advances Bill to Raise Age to Buy Assault Weapons

Still, Democrats and advocates for gun control had for months been pushing hard for the legislation on raising the purchasing age, known as House Bill 2744. The shooting in Allen provided new anger and new resolve.

At the start of the day on Monday, more than a hundred protesters lined the halls and stairs approaching the House chamber, and their chants of “Raise the age!” echoed throughout the soaring rotunda. Lobbyists and legislators said they could not recall such an animated showing of gun control supporters in the Capitol.

At the other end of the hall, Democratic representatives and state senators, some dressed in black in a sign of mourning for the victims of Saturday’s shooting, held a news conference flanked by relatives of children killed at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, images of their dead children staring out from photos and T-shirts. Some said they had been traveling to Austin nearly every week since the legislative session began.

“I don’t come here and ask you to bring my child back,” said Nikki Cross, the aunt and legal guardian of Uziyah Garcia, who was killed in Uvalde. “The one small, very simple ask that we’ve had is to just raise the age limit to purchase assault-style weapons,” she said, speaking through tears.

The legislation would not have been a factor in the shooting in Allen, where the gunman was 33 years old. But it might have delayed or prevented the gunman in Uvalde from obtaining his weapons; he waited until his 18th birthday and legally purchased a pair of AR-15-style weapons soon after, and then used one of them inside the school.

As the proceedings were getting underway on Monday, Democrats and Republicans gathered at the front of the House chamber around Jeff Leach, a six-term Republican representative from Allen who said that he did not know how much longer he would be serving.

“Increasingly I’m finding freedom in saying what I think,” he said, his voice quavering at one point. “So I’m going to say something this morning. There’s a lot we don’t know, but one thing I do know is that this is happening way too much, and it doesn’t have to be this way.”