Former Uvalde Mayor Elected to Texas House Open to ‘Conversation’ About Denying Young Adults 2A Rights

The former mayor of Uvalde, Texas will soon be representing the town and surrounding area in the Texas State House, and he’s hinting that he’d at least entertain a discussion about a gun control policy being pushed by Democrats in the state legislature.  

Don McLaughlin flipped the 80th House District from blue to red last month, winning almost 60% of the vote in a district that’s elected Democrats for decades. The representative-to-be took part in a panel discussion sponsored by the Texas Tribune this week focused on the upcoming session, which is where he said he was “willing to have a conversation on an age change” for buying firearms. McLaughlin’s openness, however, came with a substantial caveat.

But, McLaughlin added, he would not consider passing the measure before the state addresses other issues he believes contribute to the prevalence of shootings in the U.S. 

“I’m not going to change the age unless we’re going to address these other issues, because without doing both, it’s not going to work,” he said.

He also stated that “changing the age is not the answer,” McLaughlin said. “I mean, there may be a piece to the puzzle there.”

McLaughlin didn’t specify whether he was referring to raising the minimum age for military-style rifle purchases or for firearms in general. 

Now, it’s also worth noting that McLaughlin didn’t make these comments out of the blue. He was responding to a loaded question from a gun control supporter in the audience who said that “access to firearms for use for people under 21 is the main reason and the only cause that these acts of violence ended up happening,” before asking McLaughlin and Democratic state Sen. Molly Cook what they would do to prevent those under the age of 21 from accessing semi-automatic rifles. 

Cook has embraced denying young adults their Second Amendment rights, to the point that she co-authored a bill last session that would have prohibited adults under 21 from purchasing or possessing a semi-automatic rifle. McLaughin’s comments, on the other hand, were far more nuanced.  

McLaughlin appeared to struggle with the question and how to answer it, ending his response by saying he didn’t feel he had a clear solution.

“I don’t know the answer. I wish I did. I wish I had the solutions or the answer, because there’s no easy answer to this,” he said. “On one side of you do it, you’re wrong. The other side, you do it, you’re wrong, but we have to be able to sit at that table and do it.”

McLaughlin didn’t explicitly endorse the idea of raising the age to purchase a long gun from 18 to 21. At most, he said he would be willing to do so, only if other issues like mental health, the cultural promotion of violence, educating kids on real gun safety, and changes to the criminal justice system were also addressed. 

Still, depriving young adults access to a fundamental civil right isn’t a “piece of the puzzle” in addressing youth or juvenile crime. The vast majority of adults under the age of 21 will never be accused of committing an act of violence, so why should everyone in that age group be deemed too dangerous to exercise their right to keep and bear arms? 

I understand McLaughlin’s desire to keep an open mind and be approachable to folks with a variety of different viewpoints, and I’m not going to write him off as a GOP gun grabber. But if he’s wiling to have a conversation about raising the age, I hope he’s also willing to ultimately reject that idea, because that would be a step in the wrong direction, and a slap in the face to the voters in HD-80 who sent him to Austin to represent them.