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You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling or texting 988, or you can reach the Crisis Text Line by texting “HOME” to 741741.
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“We just want to create and propose solutions for policymakers to make gun ownership safe.”įor 24/7 mental health support in English or Spanish, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s free help line at 80.

“We are not trying to ban guns,” Villarreal said. Still, Villarreal urged that the solution is tightening gun regulations in places where they’re lax, including licensing requirements minimum-age requirements for purchasing guns and safe-storage requirements, which means storing firearms unloaded, locked up and separated from ammunition. Texas ranked 21st, with an average of 0.79 recovered weapons for every 100,000 people. The District of Columbia ranked highest during that six-year time period, with Nevada, Tennessee and Alabama coming next. From 2015-20, law enforcement recovered more stolen guns after crimes in Texas than in any other state.īut based on its population, Texas actually falls in the middle nationally when looking at the number of recovered stolen guns used in crimes. She also said there’s correlation between states with weaker gun restrictions and higher levels of gun deaths, as well as higher levels of trafficking of stolen guns from licensed dealers within Texas and to other states. That was true “regardless of race,” she said. 1 reason for purchasing a firearm during that time was for self-protection. were already shifting prior to the pandemic - that they were “already considerably less likely to be White and male and were younger than other gun owners,” according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in February.Īnd Jesenia Pizarro, a criminology researcher at Arizona State University, said surveys conducted earlier in the pandemic showed Americans’ No. Oliva said his organization also noticed a rise in gun ownership among Black Americans during that time.īut research suggests that demographic trends among new gun owners in the U.S. Permits for Black Texans more than doubled between fiscal years 20, in the midst of the pandemic and the protests following George Floyd’s murder in May 2020.

The agency does collect data on race, and it revealed a recent uptick in permits for Black Texans. But the agency doesn't have data on gun owners by ethnicity, which would help determine how many Hispanic people in the state own firearms. The Tribune analyzed the Texas Department of Public Safety’s permit records from fiscal years 2016-21, which ended before the permitless carry law went into effect. “There’s a lot of data missing,” she said. And many private gun sales don’t require background checks. In addition, an estimated 47,000 guns are stolen each year in Texas alone, which is likely an undercount, said Silvia Villarreal, director of research translation for the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University.
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This method is also inaccurate in Texas because the state’s permitless carry law, which went into effect in September, means that Texas residents do not have to obtain a license to carry handguns if they’re not prohibited by state or federal law from possessing a gun. “I could go into the gun store today I could buy two guns, it’s going to be one background check because they’re checking me, of course, not the gun,” Oliva said. This is because people with active concealed-carry permits don’t have to get a background check and because people can purchase multiple firearms at a time.

Even background checks performed by federally licensed gun dealers don’t fully capture the breadth of gun ownership in America, Oliva said.
