After Shooting, Texas State Fair Bans Guns. Republicans Want Them Back.

U.S.|After Shooting, Texas State Fair Bans Guns. Republicans Want Them Back.

After a gunman wounded three people at the Texas State Fair last year, organizers took the unusual step of prohibiting firearms at the annual celebration.

The new policy, announced last week, has already sparked a powerful reaction from gun groups and many Republican state officials. The state attorney general, Ken Paxton, has threatened to sue the City of Dallas, which owns the fairgrounds, if the policy is not reversed.

The dispute cuts to the heart of what has been a difficult balance between state laws that increasingly allow people to carry guns in public and the need to protect large public events from devastating outbreaks of gun violence.

It also underscores a fundamental rift between those who support broader Second Amendment rights as a means of self-defense, and gun control advocates who argue that a greater number of guns in public increases the likelihood of deadly violence.

“While it may be that your new policy placates some, the result will make your patrons less safe,” read a letter signed by dozens of Republican members of the Texas Legislature and several Republican candidates who are on the ballot in November. “Gun-free zones are magnets for crime because they present less of a threat to those who seek to do evil.”

The state party’s platform calls for an end to “gun-free” zones across Texas.

Organizers of the state fair said that the decision was reached after careful consideration, “reviewing the policies of similar Texas events and consulting with all of our security partners.” In the organization’s statement, Karissa Condoianis, a spokeswoman, said that the fair continues to be “a strong supporter of the rights of responsible gun-owning Texans.”