In Shift, Texas House Advances Bill to Raise Age to Buy Assault Weapons
AUSTIN, Texas — What had for years been a solid wall of opposition among Texas Republicans to gun control showed small signs of cracking on Monday as a bipartisan committee of the State Legislature voted to advance a bill raising the minimum age to purchase AR-15-style rifles.
The preliminary vote was remarkable in a State Capitol dominated by Republicans, all the more so because it had been entirely unexpected: When the day began, the 13-member committee had not been scheduled to meet at all.
But the killing of eight people, including several children, at a shopping center in Allen, Texas, on Saturday has exerted an unexpectedly raw and emotional force on the Legislature. The shooting, by a man with an AR-15-style rifle, came just over a week after the killing of five people by their neighbor with an AR-15-style rifle in a home north of Houston, and just shy of a year after 19 children and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old gunman armed with an AR-15-style rifle in Uvalde, Texas.
“It was the most emotional vote I’ve ever taken, and I started crying after I made it,” said State Representative Sam Harless, a Republican from the Houston area who voted to keep the bill moving toward the House floor. “That means my heart told me I made the right vote.”
Source: The New York Times
