As Many Call for Tighter Gun Laws, Texas' Set to Loosen Up

Ten new pro-gun laws will take effect in Texas in four weeks, less than a month after 22 people died in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, NBC News reported.

Gov. Greg Abbott signed the measures after they were passed in a 2019 legislative session that the National Rifle Association, or NRA, called "highly successful" at the time, celebrating that the measures "will further loosen Texas' permissive gun laws" and would send the "gun control crowd home empty-handed."

Texas is home to almost 1.4 million holders of active firearm licenses, and five of the 20 deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 1900 have occurred in the state. Among them is the rampage in El Paso, where authorities said Monday that the number of deaths had risen to 22.

The NRA said its "deepest sympathies are with the families and victims" of the shootings in El Paso and in Dayton, Ohio, where nine people were killed Sunday. The organization said it wouldn't "participate in the politicizing of these tragedies.

Photo Credit: Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images, File

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