The Lone Star State has no restrictions on magazine capacity for firearms. However, there are certain regulations regarding carrying firearms and purchasing them. In Texas, there are no laws that restrict large-capacity ammunition magazines. Most weapons, including military-type weapons, can be owned in the state, but there are some exceptions and age requirements.
At least one bill introduced in 1993 but not passed would have classified a weapon as a prohibited assault weapon because it had a magazine of 20 to 30 cartridges. Legislators passed nine gun-related laws in the last legislative session, according to the Texas State Law Library, several of which ease restrictions on carrying weapons in public. A new law will allow firearm owners to carry concealed firearms without a license in the event of a disaster evacuation. Federal law at the time prohibited a person from owning a firearm if they had been charged with a crime punishable by more than a year in prison, but there was still no national instant background check system to prevent the shooter from buying one, Dru Stevenson, from the South Texas School of Law in Houston, told ProPublica and the Tribune.
The impact of individual state gun laws is reduced by the fact that guns often cross state lines, are occasionally purchased in places with more lenient laws, and are taken to states with more restrictive laws. During the decade that the federal ban on assault weapons was in effect, firearms with light weapons were not legally manufactured for sale in the United States. For the past two years, Klarevas has worked as an expert in the states of Colorado and California in civil litigation related to the constitutionality of state restrictions on high-capacity chargers. Eric Ruben, a law professor at Southern Methodist University, said the general consensus in appellate courts is that restrictions on AR-15 weapons are constitutional, as are age restrictions.
Later, during a meeting in Houston, he told police officers that he had asked prosecutors across the state to expedite the trials of people accused of violence against law enforcement officers, Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. Supporters of the bill said Texans should be able to take their firearms with them in the event of a disaster without fear of breaking the law or being forced to leave their firearms behind. Texas gun laws generally focus on regulating the carrying of weapons rather than restricting the possession of weapons. A family member told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram newspaper that he had a mental illness; there was no record that he had been treated in local or state psychiatric facilities.
The ruling rejected a rule used by most trial courts to assess whether the law promoted public safety and instead stated that governments should enact laws that were “consistent with this country's historic tradition of regulating firearms”. An analysis by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune of hundreds of bills introduced in the Texas Legislature over nearly the past six decades revealed that at least two dozen measures would have prevented people from legally obtaining the weapons, including assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, used in seven of the state's mass shootings. In these states, buying, selling, or transferring a larger size charger than allowed by law is a crime. Among the measures that were not approved were the requirement for background checks in the sale of firearms online from person to person and alert laws.
