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.”

The bill, which would raise the age to purchase an AR-15-style rifle from 18 to 21, must still be considered by the entire Texas House, with deadlines to do so looming this week. Even if it were to pass — still an unlikely prospect — it would face almost certain rejection by the State Senate, where the hard-right lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, holds powerful control.

Republican leaders in Texas have long opposed measures to restrict guns and in recent legislative sessions have eased the rules around firearms, including passage of a 2021 law allowing adults to carry handguns without a permit.

But on a day of shouting and tears in the Texas Capitol in the wake of the latest mass shooting, the vote signaled that the unrelenting pace of mass murder that has plagued the state in recent years has had an impact on legislators, however slight. Since the start of 2021 in Texas, there have been more than a dozen mass killings of four or more people.

“The change of heart and the change of face on this vote today was not accidental,” said Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus. “It is a reflection of the pressure that is building in this building and just hit a tipping point” after the killings on Saturday.

Some Republicans in the State House on Monday talked privately of a new “openness” to the bill raising the age for purchasing of semiautomatic rifles, which had appeared destined to languish in committee despite relentless lobbying in favor of the measure by relatives of the children killed in Uvalde.

But only a handful of Republican legislators ultimately voted to move the bill forward. Those who voted against the bill did so without comment.

In condemning Saturday’s shootings, Republicans have not addressed the availability of guns, focusing instead on the mental health of the gunman. Gov. Greg Abbott demurred when asked during a news conference on Monday what could be done to get guns out of the hands of potential mass shooters. He has previously said that age restrictions on adult purchases of weapons would be likely to be found unconstitutional.

Representative Keith Self, a Republican member of Congress from the Allen area, said previously, in an interview on CNN, that those who would question the effectiveness of offering prayers in response to a mass shooting “don’t believe in an almighty God who is absolutely in control of our lives.”

Though there have been some signs of gradual shifting on the issue, Republican primary voters in Texas continue to broadly support lawful access to firearms with limited restrictions, and most elected officials in Texas have more to fear from a primary challenge by a more ardent supporter of gun rights than from a general election fight with Democrats.

Last year’s convincing defeat by Mr. Abbott of Beto O’Rourke, a former Democratic congressman closely associated with greater gun regulation, inspired little appetite among Republican lawmakers for new legislation. The election took place after the massacre in Uvalde.

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.”

He stopped short of endorsing any particular measure but said the House should consider “all of the potential solutions.”

After the shooting on Saturday, several Democrats began thinking and discussing avenues for possibly forcing a vote on the House floor, expecting that the bill would never clear the House Select Committee on Community, where it had been stalled.

Several members planned to take up the matter very publicly on the floor as soon as Mr. Leach was finished speaking. Republican leaders learned of the imminent parliamentary move on Monday morning, according to several people with knowledge of the proceedings. In an apparent effort to avoid a public fight over guns, they instead hastily convened an unplanned meeting of the committee to consider House Bill 2744.

The bill passed, 8 to 5, with two Republicans voting for it, including Mr. Harless and Representative Justin Holland, who represents parts of Collin County, where Allen is located.

The bill will not immediately come before the full House. It first must be put on the calendar, and little time remains. The last day for the House to pass its own bills is Thursday, though some Democrats believe they have other procedural means of forcing a vote before the end of the legislative session on May 29.

After the committee vote on Monday, cheers erupted from the room, which was packed with Uvalde relatives and gun control advocates. Several hugged and cried.

“I have kids and I have a granddaughter, and I have grade schools in my area,” Mr. Harless said in an interview. “I want to know when I go home at night I’ve done everything I can to keep the kids I represent safe.”

Asked about his Republican colleagues, he said his constituents differed from those in more rural areas. He said he could not predict whether the bill would ultimately pass.

“We’ll have to wait and see, but this is a big step forward,” he said. “We just need to make sure that we do everything we can to stop some of these senseless shootings that are going on.”