Moms Demand Action’s Shannon Watts, Mother Jones‘s Ari Berman, and other activists took to social media Wednesday to blame the Timberview High School shooting incident on Texas constitutional carry law.
Breitbart News reported about the shooting, wherein 18-year-old Timothy George Simpkins allegedly opened fire after a fight in a classroom.
Watts responded to the incident by blaming Texas’ constitutional carry law, “Earlier this year, Texas lawmakers further weakened the state’s gun laws by passing permitless carry to allow people to carry hidden, loaded handguns in public with no background check or safety training.”
Berman tweeted, “3,600 gun deaths a year in Texas but GOP passed [a] law this year allowing you to carry [a] gun without training or permit.”
The Nation’s Elie Mystal asked, “Is THIS the time I mention that Texas ended its gun licensing laws making it immeasurably easier for a student to get access to a gun… or is that not information people are supposed to ever bring up again?”
Emergency personnel work the scene in the parking lot at Timberview High School after a student used a gun on campus on October 6, 2021, in Arlington, Texas. (Stewart F. House/Getty Images)
Missing from the comments made by Watts, Berman, Mystal, and other gun-control activists – like Fred Guttenberg and George Takei – is the fact that Texas’ constitutional carry law only applies to persons 21-years-of-age and older. The shooting suspect is only 18. This is why Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) reacted to the shooting by noting, “Under Texas law it is illegal for the shooter to possess or have purchased the gun that was used in…[the] crime.”
Abbott noted that the shooter had the gun “illegally.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a TPUSA Ambassador. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.