Texas lawmakers are working to fill a gap in a 2009 law that was meant to keep people with a past of serious mental health problems from legally owning firearms.
The video above is from a previous report.
Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the state House and Senate that would explicitly require courts to report information about involuntary mental health hospitalization of juveniles 16 or older after a ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation. revealed that they were excluded from the national firearms background check system.
Under current law, county and county clerks across the state are required to send information about hospitalizations in court-ordered mental health hospitals to the Department of Public Safety. The state’s top law enforcement agency has been tasked with forwarding those records to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Check System, known as NICS. Federally licensed dealers are required to check the system before selling a firearm to someone.
SEE ALSO: Texas Gun Laws Allowed Uvalde School Shooter to Purchase Guns Legally
Eliot Nastadt, a former Austin state legislator who penned the law in 2009, told news organizations he intends to apply it to all Texans, regardless of age. But in the aftermath of the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, the outlet discovered that local court clerks had not shared this information with the juveniles, either out of politics or because they didn’t think they had to.
a invoice by state senator. Joan Hoffmana Houston-area Republican, unanimously exited the committee last week with bipartisan support.
Hoffman said at the committee hearing that the legislation is consistent with new federal reporting requirements and is “intended to make background checks more inclusive and in turn make our communities and schools safer.”
Congress passed gun reform legislation in June, including a requirement that federal investigators check state databases of juvenile mental health records. But such checks will fail to reveal many court-ordered juvenile liabilities in Texas because they are not currently reported.
Related: Texas Sen. John Cornyn tackles gun safety legislation after the Yovalde school massacre
It is impossible to determine how many Texans with juvenile mental health records were able to purchase firearms as adults. But the same month that Congress passed the reforms, San Antonio police arrested a 19-year-old man who had been placed in mental health facilities twice when he was 16, his father told police. The man, who had recently purchased an AR, considered the Uvalde gunman to be “Idol” and threatened a mass shooting at the Amazon delivery station where he worked, according to arrest affidavit.
SEE ALSO: Proposed federal gun safety measures may not have prevented the Uvalde school shooting, experts say
Since the news organizations’ investigation, the Texas Judicial Council, which monitors and recommends judicial reform in the state, has called on lawmakers to clarify reporting requirements for events, concluding that there is widespread confusion around them.
Nastadt has also reached out to incumbent lawmakers to ask them to introduce legislation to clarify the requirements after learning of the gap from ProPublica and Tribune.
“I just want to fix this,” Nastadt said.
the Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs – and engages – Texans on public policy, politics, government, and statewide issues.
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