After a ProPublica-Texas Tribune investigation found courts failed to report juvenile mental health hospitalizations to the federal firearm background check system, lawmakers from both parties are backing bills to ensure compliance with the law.
Legislation requiring Texas officials to report court-ordered mental health hospitalizations of juveniles to the federal background check database has received bipartisan support.This article is co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.sign up for The BriefTexas lawmakers are working to plug a gap in a 2009 law that was meant to keep people with a history of serious mental health issues from legally acquiring firearms.
Bipartisan legislation has been filed in the state House and Senate that would explicitly require courts to report information on involuntary mental health hospitalizations of juveniles age 16 and older after a ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigationUnder the current law, county and district clerks across the state are required to send information on court-ordered mental health hospitalizations to the Department of Public Safety.
Elliott Naishtat, a former state lawmaker from Austin who authored the 2009 law, told the news organizations that he intended for it to apply to all Texans no matter their age. But following the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, the outlets discovered that local court clerks were not sharing that information for juveniles, either as a matter of policy or because they didn’t believe that they had to.
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