HOUSTON (KIAH) — Within two weeks of mass shootings in Texas, reports show that a 12-year-old boy was arrested for repeatedly shooting a 32-year-old Sonic worker, Matt Davis, with an AR-15 rifle. The shooting happened in Keene, Texas. This act of violence comes just one week before the one-year mark of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde by an 18-year-old.

This past Saturday, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action gathered at over 200 events across the country for mothers to take a stand for Mother’s Day. The intention was to get Congress to reinstate a ban on assault weapons in hopes of ending the reoccurring acts of violence. The organization had one of the highest attended events in Allen, Texas where just a little over a week ago, a gunman killed eight people and wounded seven others with an assault weapon.

Texas lawmakers are keeping the conversation going on gun violence by weakening gun laws and ceding gun lobby guns everywhere through HB3 that would allow more teachers in Texas to arm by requiring an armed presence in all schools across the state. This bill has passed through the House.

Volunteer with the Texas chapter of Students Demand Action, Bryan Beecham said, “It seems like every day we wake up in Texas being rocked by another unimaginable headline about gun violence in our communities. This week’s tragedy was at the hands of a child armed with an assault weapon. This is the ‘guns everywhere,’ ‘shoot first’ world that the gun lobby and its allies have created, that we’re forced to live in.”

Just last week, six Democrats and two Republicans voted in the House Community Safety Committee to raise the age to purchase guns. The bipartisan bill hasn’t yet passed in the chamber with Republican lawmakers that refuse to vote on the measure.

According to Moms Demand Action, statistics show that every year in Texas, an estimated 4,000 people die from gun violence. Texas has the 26th-highest rate of gun deaths in the United States. In 2021, Texas lawmakers eliminated requirements that a person must get a permit before carrying a concealed handgun in public. To learn more about gun violence in Texas, you can read more here.