Even as the state grows and diversifies, it remains a redoubt of weapons, which many Texans see as a solution not the problem.
Will Moravits, 45, holds up a firearm at his home on Aug. 2 in New Braunfels. Washington Post photo by Matt McClain.Each morning, men here strap guns inside suits, boots and swim trunks. Women slip them into bra and bellyband holsters that render them invisible. They stash firearms in purses, tool boxes, portable gun safes, back seats and glove compartments.
Two years earlier, Texas lawmakers responded to the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut by allowing public school staff with concealed handgun permits to arm themselves. After the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Tex., by a gunman using an AR-15-style rifle he bought within days of turning 18, a state House committee passed a proposal to raise the age to buy, lease or receive certain semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21.
“It’s part of being Texan,” said Will Moravits, 45, a seventh-generation Texan who teaches at nearby Texas State University and carries his Sig Sauer handgun daily. In few places is the dominance of firearms more evident than in this Central Texas city of 105,000 about 35 miles northeast of San Antonio. New Braunfels was founded by German immigrants in 1845 at the confluence of the Comal and Guadalupe rivers. Settlers started a schuetzen verein, or shooting club, now among the oldest in the United States.
Moravits, a Republican precinct chair, voted for Trump twice and hopes to vote for him again. His Sig Sauer 1911 .45 caliber Texas edition handgun features a lone star emblazoned on the grip and the state outline engraved on the slide. Gun brand loyalties here are akin to affection for pickups: some favor Sig Sauer, others are Glock or “Colt for life.”
“You’re not taking it to the movies?” Rosales asked Moravits as he left recently for an early showing of “Haunted Mansion.” Kenneth Wells, 63, puts on a firearm on July 31 before going to work as a process server. Washington Post photo by Matt McClain. With so many guns around, New Braunfels has also suffered the kind of shootings that are more statistically common than mass killings, such as violent crimes and suicides. On Aug. 4, a woman killed herself with a gun in her car outside a Catholic church. Last year, a 38-year-old man shot and injured his 22-year-old neighbor in a Christmas Eve dispute. In 2020, a mother turned her handgun on her two children, ages 10 and 16, then herself.
Every morning, Rose, a federal defense health agency contractor, dons her Sig Sauer P365 9mm and fastens her earrings before she heads to work. Once a week, she slips a tiny subcompact pistol into a bellyband holster under her leggings to walk with a friend. On Thursdays, she wears her handgun to an indoor shooting range for target practice with her father.
The club’s 60 members have diversified over time, longtime members said, growing to include more women and minorities. Will Jackson, a firearms instructor who started Gladiator Gunz Training Group in 2017, moved his family from Bowie, Md., to New Braunfels three years ago in part due to Texas’s permissive gun laws. Like many here, Jackson, 47, has AR-15s he uses for hunting, target shooting and home defense, as well as other guns “everywhere.”
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