Issue Position: We Have to Reduce Gun Violence in this Country

Issue Position

Extensive background checks and improving mental health services statewide will make Texas safer.

When weapons of war are marketed and sold to civilians--weapons that are designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible--they will be used by some to kill people quickly, efficiently and effectively.

But Congress--obsessively focused on re-election, and susceptible to pressure from the gun lobby--has failed again and again to act on sensible gun reform.

Congress owes the parents and loved ones of the victims of Sandy Hook, Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas, Parkland, Florida - and every victim of gun violence that is ravaging this country - a real debate and vote on this issue. But Congress has done nothing.

That will change when I'm elected. My commitments include:

Overturning the Dickey Amendment, which prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from funding research into firearm injuries and deaths;
Requiring universal background checks and universal licensing requirements (including the requirement that all gun show sales and all internet gun sales require a background check);
Closing the "boyfriend loophole" so that anyone who commits acts of domestic violence cannot purchase firearms;
Passing legislation that prohibits straw purchases to help stop illegal gun sales;
Banning the sale and purchase of assault weapons and/or accessories which turn firearms into assault weapons;
Opposing Concealed Carry Reciprocity;
and Preventing gun sales to people with prior violent-crime convictions or to those who have been adjudicated as mentally defective or have been committed to any mental institution.

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