“Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) on Monday announced that he would call lawmakers back to the state’s Capitol on Aug. 21 for a special session after the Republican-led Legislature adjourned earlier this year without taking on gun control,” ABC News reports.

“The announcement comes weeks after six people — including three young children — were killed in a Nashville school shooting. The tragedy sparked Lee, a Republican, to urge the General Assembly to pass legislation that would keep firearms away from people who could harm themselves or others. But instead, GOP leaders moved to quickly adjourn rather than take up the governor’s request in the remaining days of an already chaotic session.”

“In a surprise move days after the Allen mall shooting and hours before a key legislative deadline, a Texas House committee advanced a bill Monday that would raise the minimum age to purchase certain semi-automatic rifles,” the Texas Tribune reports.

“The bill faces an uphill climb to becoming state law, but the vote marked a milestone for the proposal that relatives of Uvalde shooting victims have been pushing for months.”

Rep. Keith Self (R-TX), who represents the latest community reeling from a mass killing, pushed back on CNN against Americans who say more than prayers are needed to curb the violence, calling them “people that don’t believe in an almighty God,” the Washington Post reports.

Said Self: “It is God who is absolutely in control of our lives.”

“After months of pleading for more gun control measures, a Democrat who represents Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children died in a mass shooting, was told by the Republican leader of the State Senate to stop bringing up gun legislation or be barred from speaking at all,” the New York Times reports.

“In the State House, Republican members talked and joked among themselves as another Democrat, Representative Jarvis Johnson of Houston, rose to discuss gun control.”

“It was only hours later that gunfire again ripped apart the daily life of people in Texas. This time the violence erupted at a popular shopping center in the Dallas suburb of Allen, where a 33-year-old gunman armed with what officials said was an AR-15-style rifle swiftly killed eight people and wounded at least seven others, including at least one child, before a police officer fatally shot him on Saturday.”

President Biden is again asking Congress to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines following a mass shooting in Allen, Texas, on Saturday, Axios reports.

Said Biden: “Republican Members of Congress cannot continue to meet this epidemic with a shrug. Tweeted thoughts and prayers are not enough.”

Heather Cox Richardson: “For years now, after one massacre or another, I have written some version of the same article, explaining that the nation’s current gun free-for-all is not traditional but, rather, is a symptom of the takeover of our nation by a radical extremist minority. The idea that massacres are ‘the price of freedom,’ as right-wing personality Bill O’Reilly said in 2017 after the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas, in which a gunman killed 60 people and wounded 411 others, is new, and it is about politics, not our history.”

Former Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) pleaded guilty Friday to bringing a loaded handgun through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport last year, CNN reports.

Morning Consult: “The survey found that huge majorities of Americans blame recent mass shootings on mental health (85%) and on easy access to guns (75%), with smaller majorities also blaming violence in video games (61%), movies (53%) and music lyrics (51%).”

“Republicans, however, blamed video games (63%) more than they did easy access to guns (59%).”

A new Fox News Poll finds most voters favor the following proposals:

• Requiring criminal background checks on all gun buyers (87%)
• Improving enforcement of existing gun laws (81%)
• Raising the legal age to buy a gun to 21 (81%)
• Requiring mental health checks on gun buyers (80%)
• Allowing police to take guns from those considered a danger to themselves or others (80%)
• Requiring a 30-day waiting period for all gun purchases (77%)
• Another 6 in 10 favor banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons (61%).

A new Time profile of former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) ends with one of her aides trying to walk back her advocating for Australia-style gun confiscation.

Then she doubled down:

“No more guns,” she says.

Ambler, her aide and adviser, tries to clarify that she means no more gun violence, but Giffords is clear about what she’s saying. “No, no, no,” she says. “Lord, no.” She pauses another 32 seconds. “Guns, guns, guns. No more guns. Gone.”

An aide clarifies that she’s talking about Australia, where gun sales were outlawed after a mass shooting and existing weapons were purchased by the government. Giffords nods in the affirmative. It’s an idealistic goal, for sure, and one perhaps mismatched for the moment in this country. But Giffords has an answer for that: “Legislation, legislation, legislation.”

It’s ambitious. But that’s the whole point of working inside Giffords’ orbit. And she is never going to apologize for her fight on something so personal.

“Washington state became the 10th state in the U.S. to ban assault weapons on Tuesday when Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill passed by this year’s legislature as part of a sweeping package of proposals aimed at reducing gun violence,” the Olympian reports.

“An emergency clause in the assault weapons bill means that the manufacture, importation, distribution, sale, or offer for sale of any assault-style weapon are immediately banned in the state of Washington.”

Politico: “Listen to the southern right talk about violence in America and you’d think New York City was as dangerous as Bakhmut on Ukraine’s eastern front.”

“In reality, the region the Big Apple comprises most of is far and away the safest part of the U.S. mainland when it comes to gun violence, while the regions Florida and Texas belong to have per capita firearm death rates (homicides and suicides) three to four times higher than New York’s. On a regional basis it’s the southern swath of the country — in cities and rural areas alike — where the rate of deadly gun violence is most acute, regions where Republicans have dominated state governments for decades.”

“The U.S. is setting a record pace for mass killings in 2023, replaying the horror on a loop roughly once a week so far this year,” the AP reports.

“The carnage has taken 88 lives in 17 mass killings over 111 days. Each time, the killers wielded firearms. Only 2009 was marked by as many such tragedies in the same period of time.”

A new study finds that one-fifth of U.S. households purchased guns during the pandemic, “a national arming that exposed more than 15 million Americans to firearms in the home for the first time,” The Hill reports.

“The Missouri House passed a bill Monday allowing guns to be carried on public buses and inside churches and other places of worship, chipping away at the list of places where guns are prohibited even with a concealed carry permit,” the Kansas City Star reports.

“A ban on dozens of semi-automatic rifles cleared the Washington state Legislature on Wednesday and the governor is expected to sign it into law,” the AP reports.

“The high-powered firearms — once banned nationwide — are now the weapon of choice among young men responsible for most of the country’s devastating mass shootings.”

“The ban comes after multiple failed attempts in the state’s Legislature, and amid the most mass shootings during the first 100 days of a calendar year since 2009.”

“Nebraska lawmakers passed a bill Wednesday to allow people to carry concealed guns in the state without a permit, just as national attention has ramped up over gun violence in the wake of several mass shootings, including the killing last month of six people at a Tennessee school,” the AP reports.