DALLAS — When a disturbed teenager in Uvalde sought a high-powered rifle that could fire numerous rounds, he didn’t have far to go. Texas has more licensed gun dealers and manufacturers than any other state, according to a Dallas Morning News analysis of federal gun licensing data.
Texas is home to slightly more than 6,000 gun sellers, according to May 2022 licensing data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That’s more than twice as much as any other state.
Texas also led the U.S. in estimated minimum gun sales from 2017 to 2020, according to a new ATF report, and was first in most major categories of licensed gun sale s.
On May 24, an 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde killed 19 elementary school children and two teachers, pushing Texas past California for the most mass shootings in the nation — a total of 31. The FBI defines mass shootings as incidents in which at least four people are murdered with a gun.
Texas also has had more people killed in mass shootings than any other state, according to data compiled by Everytown for Gun Safety stretching back to 2009, and the second-highest number of people killed in a single mass shooting, behind Nevada.
Researchers and gun safety advocates aren’t surprised by mass shootings in Texas, where guns are plentiful and accessible largely due to lax and permissive laws.
It’s easier for teenagers in Texas to buy an AR-15 than it is a handgun, or even a beer. The high-powered AR-15 rifle, similar to the Army’s M-16, is the weapon of choice for many mass murderers bent on achieving the highest body count possible.
“At times, common sense measures seem to be within reach and then are not fulfilled,” said Nicole Golden, executive director of Texas Gun Sense, a public safety nonprofit.
Golden said her group has been fighting for gun safety laws in Texas for years but that it’s become even more challenging and “more divisive here.” Mandatory reporting of lost and stolen guns is one of the proposals that went nowhere in the Texas Legislature, she said.
Attempts to reach Texas-based gun rights advocacy groups the Texas State Rifle Association and Texas Gun Rights were unsuccessful.
Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, said existing laws need to be enforced to reduce gun violence, such as more prosecutions of criminals.
“The problem right now is that across the country crime is going up because of the revolving-door justice system,” he said.
The NRA, he said, believes each school should have its own security plan, including armed officers on site, to help cut down on school shootings.
Why are guns so popular in Texas?
“I think Texas is a state where people enjoy their freedom,” he said. “And they realize that when bad things occur, they have to depend on themselves for preserving their lives and the lives of their families.”
Golden said her organization supports common sense measures that she says most voters agree are sensible. As she describes it: “Things that have been passed in other states that have been successful in reducing gun violence.”
“We’ve worked on bills that never made it out of committee,” she said.
Meanwhile, laws making it easier to acquire and carry guns have “sailed” through the Legislature and become law, she said.
How gun sales in Texas compare with other states
Texas is the second-most populous state in the U.S., but population was not always a factor in gun sales. Two other heavily populated states — California (first) and New York (fourth) — were not near the top in terms of gun sales and dealers.
And when it comes to multiple gun purchases, Texas also takes the top spot.
Among the Southwest border states, Texas produced the majority of multiple rifle sales, which must by law be reported to the ATF. From 2016 to 2020, Texas accounted for more than 53% of multiple rifle sales, according to the ATF’s 300-page National Firearms in Commerce and Trafficking Assessment Report.
Nationwide, Texas and Florida were responsible for about 20% of all reported multiple gun sales, the ATF report said.
Texas also led the U.S. in 2020 for the number of manufacturers and dealers of certain specialized weapons, such as short-barreled rifles and shotguns, machine guns and silencers, which are regulated and taxed under a separate federal law, according to the ATF report.
But Texas is not the worst state for gun safety, according to at least one advocacy group.
The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence’s annual scorecard rated Texas the 15th worst state for gun safety laws. Arkansas was rated the worst in the nation.
Ari Freilich, state policy director for the Center, said his organization gave Texas an F, its lowest grade, in the scorecard issued last year. Texas, he said, has above average rates of gun homicide. And the problem is getting worse, he added. Three of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history have occurred in Texas while Greg Abbott was governor, he said.
Freilich said gun homicide rates rose 66% while Abbott was governor and that since he took office in 2015, more than 570 Texas children have been killed with guns — more than any other state during that period.
Abbott’s press secretary, Renae Eze, said in a statement that while “some are politicizing” the Uvalde tragedy, the governor has led the state’s response from the beginning by deploying resources, sharing information and issuing a disaster declaration to speed up help to the community.
“And to prevent future tragedies, the Governor has reached out to legislative and state leaders to work together to provide solutions to protect all Texans, requesting special legislative committees and calling for immediate school safety reviews of Texas public schools,” she said.
Inaction following mass shootings
Freilich said interest in gun safety reforms grew in Texas following the 2019 massacre in El Paso in which a hate-driven gunman targeting Latinos opened fire inside a Walmart, killing 23 people and wounding many others, police said. A study was commissioned. The Giffords Center made recommendations. But what passed were “largely symbolic half measures,” Freilich said.
Freilich said Texas lawmakers have done nothing to change gun laws that allow “bad people to acquire firearms.”
The NRA’s influence in Texas, where its annual convention was held last month, remains strong, he said, despite its bankruptcy and reports of financial mismanagement. In its more profitable years, the NRA spent a lot of money on political campaigns, he said.
“Their political spending has declined significantly. But the ways in which they shape and control lawmakers is not just financial contributions but having a very mobilized political base,” he said.
For a lawmaker who strays from the NRA’s talking points on guns, the mere threat of NRA campaign spending or endorsements of a rival candidate is significant, Freilich said. As a result, gun views in Texas politics, like in other states, have become “somewhat of a litmus test,” he said.
Arulanandam said money was never behind the NRA’s strength and influence.
“Our strength has always been in our grass roots and our members,” he said. “We’re strong because most Americans support gun rights.”
Looser gun laws, not gun control
The most recent gun legislation to emerge from Texas made it easier for people to access guns.
Texas Republicans pushed through the measure, which allows residents to openly carry guns without a permit. Abbott devised, approved and signed the law against the advice of law enforcement officials.
The new permitless carry law didn’t contribute to the Uvalde mass shooting. But it reflects the state’s obsession with gun culture despite polls indicating most Texans support some gun control measures.
Abbott recently called for special legislative committees to examine what legislation and action might be taken to prevent future school shootings. Experts predict it will not produce any laws limiting access to firearms.
Daniel Webster, a professor of American health at Johns Hopkins University and co-director of its Center for Gun Violence Solutions, said a study he published in 2020 provided evidence that state gun licensing requirements and bans of large capacity magazines were associated with “significant reductions” in the number of deadly mass shootings.
Licensing requirements slow access to guns, he said, by requiring applicants to provide fingerprints and photographs at their local police department.
“Access to firearms is incredibly key in many of these (mass shootings),” said Webster, who has studied gun violence and gun policy for about 30 years.
Webster called a licensing process “the most robust system we have,” which keeps guns from people who are “too dangerous to have them.” It’ll never be known whether a gun licensing requirement would have stopped the Uvalde shooter, but Webster said it could have made a difference.
“We don’t know what he would have done if he actually had to go eyeball to eyeball with law enforcement. It could have been that he would have been intimidated and not done it,” he said.
Webster is not optimistic about gun control measures passing in Texas.
“All the signals down there are that it (mass shootings) has nothing to do with guns,” he said.
The gun lobby, he said, has promoted the idea that guns are “tools to protect your liberties.”
Golden said Texas Gun Sense will continue fighting for change, by speaking with citizens and community leaders across the state.
“We’re building the political infrastructure for a time when the political will is there,” she said.
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METHODOLOGY
To produce the figures and charts in this story, The Dallas Morning News obtained data from four sources: the Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Everytown for Gun Safety and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. All of the data analysis and cleaning was done using the Python programming language. Visualization was done with a combination of DataWrapper, QGIS, Plotly and Mapbox GL JS. A full methodology, along with data and code, can be found here.
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