A non-profit organization in southeast Texas made up of over 200 parents who lost their children in gun violence is calling for legislative action to curb gun control.

This Thursday marks one year since the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde of Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers.

It’s pain that the Surviving Parents of Southeast Texas understand. Founded by grieving parents in Beaumont, the group has been helping families in the region to navigate the grief of losing children to gun violence since 2015.
In 2012, Holloway’s pregnant daughter was shot and killed at home. After the tragedy, Holloway created the group, using her personal experiences in coping with this loss to help others.

Immediately after the deadly shooting last year, the group made a trip to Uvalde to bring relief to the victims' families.
Morris has gone through the most tragic thing any mother could go through - seeing her son being gunned down in front of her. She said the pain never goes away.

The shared grief has brought the two grief-stricken mothers together to help those who are going through the same pain. They have also been calling for the Texas government to take up legislative action to curb gun violence.
In the wake of a mass shooting in Allen, Texas on May 6 that killed eight people and injured seven others, a House committee in Texas advanced a measure on the following Monday to raise the minimum age to buy semi-automatic rifles.

But the bill still has a long way to go in Texas, where Republicans have trifecta control of the House, Senate and the governor's office.
Holloway and Morris are calling for gun policy overhaul on the national level. But it isn't a simple task.
As one of the states with the most-relaxed gun-control laws, the Texas legislature has approved more than 100 bills that loosened gun 

restrictions since 2000.
As of 2021, deaths from firearms in Texas, which are overwhelmingly suicides or homicides, have reached highest levels in almost three decades, according to a Texas Tribune news article.