TX Sen. Candidate James Talarico Supports Banning Private Gun Sales

U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico (D) supports implementing a background check requirement for all gun sales, thereby criminalizing the private gun sales Americans have enjoyed since 1791.

Under the heading Public Safety & Justice on his campaign website, securing background checks for all guns is listed as one of Talarico’s “priorities,” should he be elected to the Senate.

Another priority is the passage of a firearm storage law. Such laws typically set forth how guns must be stored–often locked in a safe or container, sometimes separate from ammunition–in order to protect “children in the home.”

A third priority is to raise the minimum age at which someone could “purchase semi-automatic rifles with certain military-style features like high-capacity magazines.”

Talarico is running against Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, a staunch Second Amendment supporter who, as Texas Attorney General, has used his position to try to roll back any impact Biden-era gun controls might have on Texans.

For example, on April 24, 2026, Paxton’s office announced he “secured a landmark legal victory for gun owners, preserving an injunction that prevented enforcement of a Biden Administration Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) rule that unlawfully sought to violate Americans’ constitutional right to privately buy and sell firearms.”

In 2025 Paxton joined 25 other “State Attorneys General in a West Virginia-led amicus brief, asked the Supreme Court to take up a challenge to the District of Columbia’s lawless restrictions on the Second Amendment.”

He sued the city of Dallas more than once over carry bans that he believed violated Texans’ Second Amendment rights.

On April 17, 2025, Paxton said, via a press release, “I will always do everything in my power to defend Texans’ gun rights from cities that would strip us of our legal rights.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. He is a lever action man in an AR-15 world. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.