Why Texans Can’t Get the Gun Laws They Really Want

There’s a disconnect in Texas between public sentiment toward guns and the state’s increasingly lenient public policy toward gun ownership. As part of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, we’ve been polling Texas voters for more than a decade on this topic, and it turns out that Texans, like most Americans, favor stricter gun control laws. But for the past decade, up to and including laws passed in 2019, the first legislative session after mass shootings in El Paso and Odessa, the state Legislature has continuously and steadily loosened the state’s gun laws. And in the wake of another horrific mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, it’s hard not to imagine more of the same. CONTINUED

Joshua Blank (U. of Texas at Austin), Politico Magazine


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