A new Select Committee on Community Safety formed by Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan will look at firearm related proposals this legislative session. NBC 5’s Julie Fine reports the 13 house members will look at safety and other items surrounding guns in Texas.
Texas lawmakers will take a closer look at firearm-related proposals this upcoming legislative session.
Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan formed a new, 13-member Select Committee on Community Safety. The committee will have jurisdiction over all proposals for community safety relating to the possession, use, sale and transfer of firearms and ammunition, and associated criminal offenses and penalties.
“The Texas House intends to do everything in our power to keep children and classrooms in our state safe,” said Phelan. “While there are many factors related to this wide-ranging issue that our chamber will discuss during the legislative session, such as mental health, social media and school safety, a necessary component to this conversation will be related to firearm safety.”
This committee is less than a year after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, where 19 students and two adults were killed by an 18-year-old gunman.
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"I don't see how we move forward without addressing it to make sure that Texans know we are serious in the legislature about their safety, with the loss of those 21 lives,” said State Rep. Rhetta Andrews Bowers, D-Garland, who is on the committee.
"I think it is important that we have a sincere, respectful, serious, conversation about these issues that have happened over the last 5 years,” said State Rep. Justin Holland, R-Heath.
House lawmakers who represent Uvalde and El Paso, where 21 people were killed at a Walmart, and Odessa, where seven people died in a shooting rampage, are also on the committee.
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Bowers is hoping red flag laws and bringing the purchase age to 21 are on the table.
“It is one thing to be a law-and-order state, yes. I get that. But, we really should be about protecting the citizens of the state of Texas,” said Bowers.
Holland pointed to penalties in the conversation.
“We want to make sure that your constitutional Second Amendment rights are not infringed upon, but at the same time, we can do things that are commonsense.
"The Senate Bill 23 that has been proposed increases penalties for gun offenders,” said Holland.
The 13-member committee is made up of seven Republicans and six Democrats and will likely have many proposals come before them.
