AUSTIN, Texas — It was an early morning leaving Plano. And a late night returning there.
A group of about 40 mothers and fathers from across Collin County made the 440-mile round trip to Austin on Monday.
They were hoping for productive conversations about gun laws in Texas, nine days after eight people were killed and another seven were injured when a 33-year-old man armed with multiple guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition opened fire at the Allen Premium Outlets mall.
It’s a mall where they all shop.
“It’s just in our backyard now,” said Kelly Karthik.
“How many more people have to die before they listen?” asked Ann Bacchus, who helped organize the trip.
They wore orange t-shirts with the title of their new group, Collin County Parents Against Gun Violence, and set up in a conference room in the capitol extension.
Democrats like state Rep. Victoria Neave Criado of Dallas, state Rep. Salman Bhojani of Euless, and state Rep. Rhetta Bowers of Dallas were eager to take meetings.
They shared in the parents’ frustration.
“That’s not the type of Texas we want or deserve,” Neave Criado told them.
Lawmakers from Houston and San Antonio stopped by too.
The Collin County families said they wanted clarity on where lawmakers stand on five priorities: raising the age to purchase from 18 to 21, instituting universal background checks with no loopholes, enhancing safe storage laws, passing extreme risk protection orders and creating a three-day waiting period between the purchase of and delivery of a gun.
Every Democrat said they agreed with those priorities.
So, the moms and dads saved their most passionate pleas for their Republican representatives.
“We feel unsafe. We feel scared. We feel angry. We’re frustrated,” Bacchus told state Rep. Jeff Leach, whose district includes Allen.
“When it comes to solutions, I want to be at the table and lock arms with you to pass measures that actually work,” he said.
But, he disagreed with the priorities the group – which included many of his own constituents – put forward.
“Show me the law we could have passed in this building that would have prevented what happened in Allen last Saturday,” Leach told them.
He told them he would not apologize for being a “fierce” supporter of the Second Amendment and that he believed owning a gun was a God-given right that the government is meant to protect.
But, he also said he believes laws could be passed to stop mass shootings from happeningm, like ensuring discharges from the military for mental health reasons appear in background checks.
The group stopped by Republican state Rep. Matt Shaheen’s office and spent a few minutes face-to-face with him before walking to what they thought would be their final meeting of the day with the state senator who represents them.
They were about 10 minutes late to a 4:30 p.m. meeting at state Sen. Angela Paxton’s office.
Paxton’s staff told them they were a larger than expected crowd, so they moved them to a hallway around the corner.
As the group waited, state Rep. Mihaela Plesa, a Democrat from Plano, stopped by.
She had sent her chief of staff to meet with the group earlier in the day because she was in Collin County attending one of the victim’s funerals.
“He should have never been able to legally acquire an arsenal of weapons and go in and commit a hate crime in our county,” Plesa said about the suspect in Allen.
They applauded. And then they kept waiting.
Paxton’s staff told them the senator had been ready to meet with them at 4:30 p.m., but by 4:40 p.m. had moved to the Senate floor to vote and could not leave.
The group waited, but had a bus to catch at 5:3 p.m.
So they left without seeing their senator.
“It’s depressing,” said Maury Marcus who lives in Plano. “I feel that there’s a partisan divide and the pro-gun faction has the upper hand.”
As she was leaving the Capitol rotunda, frustration was visible on Rekha Shenoy’s face.
"I don’t feel good, but I don’t want to give up. So that’s one thing I’m not doing - I’m not giving up," Shenoy said.
The mass shooting in Allen was only the latest in Texas.
Nineteen children and two teachers died at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, in Uvalde.
Twenty-three people died at an El Paso Wal-Mart in August of 2019.
Weeks later, seven people died when a man went on a shooting spree in Midland and Odessa.
This week marks the fifth anniversary of eight students and two teachers being shot and killed at Santa Fe High School.
And in 2017, 26 people died in a church in Sutherland Springs.