Talarico defeated Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the March 3 Democratic primary for the party’s nomination to challenge for the seat currently held by Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn. Talarico’s publicly-stated positions on his campaign website claim he seeks to “protect the Second Amendment while protecting our neighbors from gun violence,” but his actions paint a more hostile picture toward the right to keep and bear arms.

Talarico’s track record on Second Amendment rights during his time in the Texas House of Representatives is sparse given that most anti-Second Amendment legislation never advanced out of committee in the Republican-dominated legislative body. On his site, though, Talarico boasted about opposing Texas’ “constitutional carry” legislation, and also called for so-called “universal background checks” and “red-flag” laws.

The dynamic in the Texas House allowed Talarico to adopt his public persona as a moderate who eschews more extreme anti-Second Amendment proposals, like bans on so-called “assault weapons.” However, the legislation that Talarico has sponsored or co-authored throughout his tenure in the Texas House has had a distinctly anti-Second Amendment tilt.

Talarico did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

In 2023, two bills Talarico co-authored, HB220, which restricted handgun sales to people and added new regulatory burdens involving concealed carry permits, and HB2744, did advance out of the Select Committee on Community Safety, a body established after the May 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Talarico cited the select committee’s passage of the latter bill, which would raise the age to buy certain semiautomatic firearms to 21, as something that made him “believe in humanity again” during a Dec. 14 appearance on “Surrounded,” a YouTube show featuring a guest surrounded by nearly two dozen people who question the guest, where he claimed that the Uvalde shooting “haunts” him.

WATCH:

“I saw those parents from Uvalde. I saw them make the 60-mile drive from Uvalde to the state capital multiple times during that legislative session demanding, begging for basic common sense gun safety,” Talarico told an undecided voter. “They believed in the Second Amendment just like I do. But they knew that there needed to be some kind of regulation to keep everyone safe and protect everybody’s freedoms, including the freedom of those 19 babies to live and fulfill their potential. What I saw them do just in over the course of one legislative session is move the needle on a commonsense bill to raise the age to buy those kind of weapons from 18 to 21.”

Talarico was also listed as a co-author of HB22 in 2023 by the Texas House, legislation requiring people to fill out a “multiple purchase report” if they purchased more than one firearm or three detachable magazines. The bill, which would make failure to fill out such a form a misdemeanor, did not advance out of committee.

In 2021, Talarico voted for an amendment to “strike the enacting clause” of a bill that would make Texas a “constitutional carry” state before he also voted against its passage multiple times. He also voted against making Texas a “Second Amendment sanctuary state” and against a prohibition on the state government giving contracts to companies discriminating against the firearms industry, according to Project Vote Smart.

Radical anti-gun politicians like James “Beto 2.0” Talarico fear one thing most: a united voice defending the Second Amendment.

Join the fight to protect your rights: https://t.co/9tRnZJgnLY pic.twitter.com/dOZiy8ErPj

— NRA (@NRA) March 8, 2026

Two years before the constitutional carry vote, Talarico authored three pieces of legislation targeting gun rights. HB3506 reduced the circumstances in which Texas would recognize an out-of-state concealed carry permit, while HB3507 would require the use of the National Instant Check System (NICS) for loaning a firearm to someone at a shooting range.

Perhaps the most significant bill Talarico introduced in 2019 was HB3508, which would have turned Texas from a “shall-issue” standard for concealed carry permits to a “may issue” or discretionary standard, like those used in Democratically-controlled states like California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. The Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen found that New York’s “may issue” standard on concealed carry was unconstitutional.

Talarico received the endorsement of Everytown (a gun control group supported by billionaire Michael Bloomberg) on March 3, according to Project Vote Smart.

“James Talarico’s agenda doesn’t just disarm Texans—it leaves them vulnerable. The right to self-defense is a fundamental, God-given right. While Talarico likes to invoke the Bible, there is no Christian justification for disarming your neighbor and leaving them defenseless against evil,” said Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America. “Texans will never accept tyranny. And Talarico will have to learn that the hard way this November—at the ballot box.”

In 2024, Talarico received 0% ratings from the NRA and its state affiliate, the Texas State Rifle Association, Project Vote Smart reported.

The NRA gave Talarico an “F” grade throughout his time in the state Legislature, a spokesman told the DCNF, while the group gave Cornyn a B rating and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton an A rating.

“James Talarico is a far-left gun-grabber masquerading as a moderate centrist,” NRA-ILA Executive Director John Commerford told the DCNF. “Throughout his career in Austin, Talarico has been an outspoken supporter of anti-gun policies that would undermine Texans’ Second Amendment rights. While Talarico failed to pass these progressive pipe dreams in the Lone Star State, he could, and would, serve as the deciding vote to green light [Democratic] Senator [Chuck] Schumer [of New York]’s sweeping gun bans in the United States Senate.”

Both Everytown for Gun Safety and fellow gun-control organization Giffords Law Center (a group named for former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona) give Texas firearms laws low marks, with the former giving Texas 14 out of a possible 100 points, while the latter gives Texas gun laws a grade of F.