AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott released the Texas action safety report Thursday in response to years of gun violence in Texas.
- Texas action safety report released
- Calls for more background checks
- Crackdown on straw gun sales
The report outlines six executive actions the state of Texas should take, according to Abbott’s Texas Safety Commission. For all law enforcement, it calls for expanding domestic violence and rapid response programs and updating officers on emergency detention protocol. It calls for a partnership between the Department of Public Safety and state fusion centers, as well as an acceleration of the DPS firearm safety program. It also calls for policy training for physicians on the disclosure of confidential information to law enforcement.
In the report. Abbott calls for more background checks for private sellers without making them mandatory by law. He calls for the Legislature to make it “easy, affordable, and more common for sellers of firearms to voluntarily use background checks when selling firearms to strangers.”
“This could reduce inadvertent and unwitting private sales of guns to persons who may be prohibited from purchasing them,” the report explains.
The report also calls for a crackdown on straw gun sales, or the purchase of guns for somebody not legally allowed to purchase them. Abbott believes this would add more state resources to fight back against the practice, even though straw gun sales are already illegal on a federal level.