AUSTIN, Texas — State lawmakers are staying busy pre-filing hundreds of bills ahead of the next legislative session. Unsurprisingly, one topic that’s getting a lot of attention is guns.

Five years ago, a gunman opened fire at a church in Sutherland Springs, killing 26 people. Two years later, a gunman killed 23 Texans at a Walmart in El Paso. And this past summer, another attacker killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. He purchased two semi-automatic rifles when he turned 18 years old.

That’s why Rep. Lina Ortega, D-El Paso, wrote House Bill 129. It would raise the age to own a semi-automatic weapon from 18 to 21. 

“It’s something that has been occurring for many years because of the way the laws are here,” Rep. Ortega said. “But with the more recent tragedies, it’s something where, as a state representative from this community, I feel obligated to try to do something to prevent this kind of violence.”

Rep. Ortega, who hoped for change after the El Paso shooting, said the last legislative session was “rough.” She said after the Walmart shooting, the governor promised El Pasoans that there’d be reform. Instead, during the last legislative session, gun legislation became even more lax with the passage of the permit-less carry law.

“I had conversations with state leadership. I thought at least one common sense piece of legislation dealing with gun reform was universal background checks, because it has such a high approval rating in the state of Texas,” she said. “And I spoke to my colleagues. I spoke to leadership in the House in order to see whether I could get that bill on the House floor for an open debate. They wouldn’t budge; they wouldn’t give it to me. And so it was extremely disappointing to see that you’re promised something, and it just doesn’t happen. But again, I’m a Democrat, and our state of Texas is controlled by Republicans. And so they have the upper hand, and they’re the ones that make the decisions. And unless they are in agreement on something such as this, we’re gonna get out.”

Wes Virdell, the Texas state director for Gun Owners of America, thinks adults 18-and-up should be able to carry a semi-automatic rifle.

“If you’re 18, you can vote ... You can join the military,” he said. “We’ve obviously recognized that is the age of adulthood. And so therefore, we think that 18-to-20 should also be allowed to own a semi automatic firearm.”

Another one of Rep. Ortega’s bills for the upcoming legislative session, House Bill 155, would require background checks for private firearm sales and transfers. Right now, only licensed dealers are required to do background checks. 

“Any person who buys a firearm from a private seller off of Craigslist, or from anyone who isn’t a federally licensed gun dealer, is not subject to a background check in Texas,” said Allison Anderman, senior counsel and director of local policy for the Giffords Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “This means that someone who is prohibited by law from purchasing or possessing firearms can essentially do so really easily. So requiring that there’s a background check on the purchase of any firearm enforces the laws that we already have on the books and ensures that people who are dangerous cannot easily acquire firearms.”

Virdell has a different point of view.

“We think that when you have to get permission from the government to sell a firearm from one person to another, we think that’s a violation of your rights,” Virdell said. “I would say background checks are ineffective, and they don’t actually stop people from doing bad things.”

House Bill 284, written by Rep. Vikki Goodwin, D-Austin, would require reporting multiple semi-automatic rifle sales or transfers within five consecutive business days to the county sheriff.

“We simply want to make our community safer,” she said. “And there are some laws that we can pass — some very common sense laws — that would be helpful. And I think we all agree that we should be able to send our kids to school and not have to worry about a mass shooting in the school. We should be able to go to church and grocery stores and parks without having that constant threat. I just feel like we’ve gone so far in one direction of giving so many allowances to people with guns to be able to carry them anywhere. And it can be intimidating for those of us who don’t really want to feel like we have to be armed at all times to be safe.” 

Representative Goodwin said local law enforcement usually knows their community well and can do some digging if something doesn’t feel right.

“Purchasing multiple weapons at one time can be an indicator, an indicator of gun trafficking, or that a person is amassing an arsenal for the purpose of committing a mass shooting,” Anderman said. “So therefore, just alerting the authorities so that they can look into it and make sure that there’s nothing amiss, again, is good for public safety.” 

Neither Rep. Goodwin nor Rep. Ortega are sure they will have Republican support.

“I think it’s a little bit too early, but honestly, I think it would be very, very difficult for a Republican at the Capitol to support this type of legislation,” Rep. Ortega said. “But that doesn’t stop me from filing the bills.”

Nicole Golden, the executive director of Texas Gun Sense, said in a statement to Spectrum News that there’s an urgent need for change.

“While we cannot predict what the Texas Legislature will do this session, we know that public consensus favors stronger public safety and that we have champions at the Capitol ready to go to bat for us,” Golden wrote. 

Virdell thinks if any of this legislation passes, it wouldn’t be effective, anyway.

“That’s the thing is people who want to do bad things don’t care what the law is anyway. So it doesn’t matter what law we create. If they want to do something bad, they can do it with cars, with hammers, with knives, with fists,” he said.

Last year, when lawmakers passed permit-less carry, it opened the door for adults over 21 to carry a handgun without a license or training. Virdell wants this law to be expanded for 18-to-20-year-olds.

In the wake of the Uvalde tragedy, many Republicans have focused on expanding mental health care resources across the state, instead of passing gun legislation. 

“They make the issue about mental illness so that they don’t have to talk about guns,” Anderman said. “But the reality is that America does not have higher rates of mentally ill people or dangerous mental illness than other peer nations, yet, we have astronomically higher rates of gun violence. We have the most privately owned firearms in the world by a mile. And we have correspondingly the most gun violence in the world outside of war zones. So the issue is not about mental illness, it’s about guns.”

The legislative session begins in January.

Follow Charlotte Scott on Facebook and Twitter.