The Robb Elementary School shooting shocked Texas and exposed failures in systems to protect children from school shootings. State Rep. Don McLaughlin says the lessons were behind his efforts to pass the Uvalde Strong Act in the last Texas Legislature.
McLaughlin was mayor of Uvalde from 2014 to 2023 and now represents District 80 in the Texas House. His Bill 33, the Uvalde Strong Act, passed unanimously during his first legislative session. He says the bill grew from the failures he witnessed during the Robb Elementary shooting.
“I was there that day, and what I saw was pure chaos,” he says. “There was no coordination. There was no leadership that took charge that day.” He says responding agencies often lacked familiarity with one another despite serving the same community.
The legislation requires agencies to train together, conduct tabletop exercises, and establish clearer command structures before a crisis occurs. “If these officers are trained together and working together and they have to respond somewhere else, they can use this same format as in House Bill 33 going forward,” he says. He believes the model can be applied beyond schools to incidents at malls and other public locations.
The bill also addresses mental health support for first responders. McLaughlin says rural Texas often lacks resources for officers coping with traumatic events.
“We wanted to make sure that’s available because those officers that had to go in that room, whether they were in the hallway or afterwards, what they saw, they have to live with every day of their life,” he says. “We as citizens can’t imagine what they had to see.”
McLaughlin also wants to address the challenges of recruiting and retaining law enforcement officers.
“It is more than just money,” he says. “It’s the environment.” He says that officers often feel unsupported and that atmosphere discourages potential recruits. “Why would you want to come into that hostility?” he asks. “That’s what we’ve got to change.”
McLaughlin also points to structural problems in the profession. He says some newly certified officers obtain reserve commissions but never actively serve communities because higher-paying private highway traffic-control jobs are available. According to him, that practice contributes to staffing shortages in local departments.
He also points to District attorneys who decline to prosecute certain crimes. McLaughlin says Texas should consider stronger accountability mechanisms for elected prosecutors.
“We have to look at a way that we can either recall a DA or some form, or we can hold a DA accountable to the people he’s elected to serve,” he says. He also expresses openness to proposals that would create additional oversight of prosecutors.