What is the Texas Lege doing right now?
- Many committees in both the House and Senate are holding emergency hearings on the ERCOT / power outage issues.
- See a calendar of hearings on the TLO website. From that calendar, you can click any hearing notice for links to listen in and submit comments.
- You can view any current committee livestreams from the front page of the TLO website (Right column: Legislative Activity > Video Broadcasts). Past committee livestreams are here: House | Senate.
- This gives us an idea of what hearings and comment submission may look like for gun bills (see below).
- Neither the House nor the Senate has started referring bills to committees yet.
- After a chamber refers gun bills to committees, we will ask you to contact those committees asking for a quick hearing + vote on our priority bills.
How will we be able to give input at committee hearings?
- The Senate leans toward allowing public, in-person testimony but requires a negative COVID test. (See policies.)
- The House does not require testing, leaning toward masks and social distance policies. They are also poised to limit in-person testimony and instead solicit written comments. (See policies.)
- For current meetings, House committees are limiting public comments (on-the-record statements) to 3,000 characters, which is about one page or 500 words.
- Here’s an example of a House hearing notice.
- Here’s an example of a Senate hearing notice.
- Here’s an example of a submission page for public comments. The public can submit written comments for a hearing up until the hearing ends.
With committees stalling, what can WE do RIGHT NOW for gun rights?
- Ask your legislators to co-author our GOA Texas priority bills.
- Legislators have filed a record number of strong, pro-gun priority legislation, such as Constitutional Carry, ending “gun-free” zones, and Second Amendment Sanctuary.
- With committee hearings on most issues delayed, it will be critical to get as many co-authors as possible on these bills before they reach committee hearings.
- CLICK HERE for a form that you can use to easily write a note to your State Representative and State Senator asking them to co-author our priority bills.