Lakewood Church shooting: Spotlight on Texas gun laws after Houston megachurch attack

New video shows Genesse Moreno just hours before she walked inside Joel Osteen’s megachurch on Sunday and opened fire.

Despite her long history with mental illness, she had been able to legally purchase the gun.

The footage obtained by ABC13 and taken from a neighbour’s home CCTV camera in Conroe, a northern suburb of Houston, show Moreno loading up her car from inside her garage while using a blue tarp to conceal her work.

At one point, she can be seen walking around her car with a brown trench coat folded over her arm. Moreno reportedly wore a trench coat during the attack.

The Lakewood Church shooter reportedly terrorized her neighbours for years before she opened fire inside Joel Osteen’s megachurch on Sunday.

“Her way of intimidation was to bring the gun cases in and out, crossbows. She’d come out, have her gun cases, do heil Hitler, flip you off, call you the b-word, or something. It was something every day,” one neighbour told KPRC, a Houston TV news station.

Another neighbour said Moreno had scrawled swastikas on her property and taunted her and her grandchildren multiple times. Another claimed she tried to run them over.

“I’ve been through hell. I have reported this, reported this and its gone on deaf ears,” said one neighbour, who gave her name as Jill. “I’ve had psychological officers out here that won’t answer their door. They won’t do anything. [They say,] ‘until she hurts you there is nothing we can do’.”

Authorities say they’re reviewing how Genesse Moreno, who opened fire at a Houston megachurch was able to legally purchase and obtain the AR-style rifle used in the attack despite a years-long criminal record and a history of mental illness.

Read more:

Conservative pundits, activists, and politicians have continued to spread the unfounded claim that the Lakewood church shooter was a transgender woman – even after it was kiboshed by police.

Houston police said in a press conference on Monday that, although Moreno had sometimes gone by the alias “Jeffrey Escalante”, their investigations so far had found no evidence that she had ever identified as any gender other than female.

The Independent has also found no mention of any trans identity in court documents from Moreno’s past divorce and child custody battle, and police have confirmed that she was the biological mother of her son.

But that did not stop conservative crusader Chris Rufo, anti-LGBT+ activist Chaya Raichik, Donald Trump Jr, and even Texas Senator Ted Cruz from latching onto the idea.

Io Dodds reports:

There were accusations made by Genesse Moreno’s former mother-in-law in court documents that Moreno suffered from Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, and was making her own seven-year-old son sick.

The child, who is special needs, was with Moreno when she walked into Joel Osteen’s megachurch in Houston on Sunday and began firing. The child was struck when he was caught in an exchange of gunfire between Moreno and two off-duty cops.

“Nurses found adult pills in (her son’s) endotracheal tube while he was in the hospital. Then more adult pills were found in his feeding tube,” according to the court documents.

The child who was not potty trained was non-verbal, and “suffered by his mother ignoring medical advice, not taking him to therapy for eating, speech, and not giving him any social interaction,” the documents stated.

In the days since Genesse Moreno entered the megachurch on Sunday and opened fire, information has increasingly emerged about her mental health and criminal history – raising questions around whether something could have been done to have prevented the shooting.

Police said she had legally purchased the AR-15 rifle in December 2023 — despite the fact that court records show that in 2022, she was arrested for a weapons misdemeanour charge.

While more details continue to emerge as the investigation continues, all eyes are turning to Texas’ lax gun laws – particularly the state’s absence of red flag laws.

Gun safety advocates are raising the question as to whether red flag laws — also known as extreme risk protection orders — could have prevented the shooting.

Twenty-one states have implemented red flag laws — but Texas isn’t one of them.

Kelly Rissman reports:

Across the US, 21 states have enacted red flag laws, which allow for law enforcement — or family members or health professionals, in some states — to intervene if someone shows signs that they are a danger to themselves or others.

A court can temporarily take away the individual’s guns or prevent them from buying one.

The issue in the case of the Lakewood Church case is that, in Texas, there is no red flag law.

Had there been a red flag law, Moreno might have been prevented from purchasing an AR-15 in December 2023 — just two months before she opened fire with that very same gun in the megachurch.

When loved ones or law enforcement officials file a petition asking a court to intervene, the judge will consider a few risk factors. These risk factors, according to gun safety groups, often include a pattern or recent threats of violence, history of dangerous behaviour with firearms, substance abuse, or recent firearm acquisition.

Aside from substance abuse, Moreno’s behaviour appears to fit these risk factors to a tee: Her recent acquisition of a gun, her alleged fits of violence reported by family members, and dangerous behaviour with a firearm – such as reportedly threatening her husband or the misdemeanour weapons charge.

In the wake of Sunday’s shooting, Texas State Rep Gene Wu wrote on X: “This is WHY we need RED FLAG laws! Every single person in the Lakewood shooter’s life thought that there’s no way she should have ever been allowed to buy a gun. But Texas law allowed her. Republicans made sure of it.”

The shooter’s own family has also blamed the lack of gun control in the state of Texas.

Moreno’s neighbours say that she intimidated them with guns and made Nazi salutes for several years before the shooting, my colleague Andrea Cavallier reports.

Residents in Conroe – a north Houston suburb – told local reports that Moreno was often seen with multiple guns, harassing and threatening them and making them fearful in their own neighbourhood.

“Her way of intimidation was to bring the gun cases in and out, crossbows. She’d come out, have her gun cases, do heil Hitler, flip you off, call you the b-word, or something. It was something every day,” one neighbour told KPRC, a Houston TV news station.

Another neighbour said Moreno had scrawled swastikas on her property and taunted her and her grandchildren multiple times. Another claimed she tried to run them over.

“I’ve been through hell. I have reported this, reported this and its gone on deaf ears,” said one neighbour, who gave her name as Jill. “I’ve had psychological officers out here that won’t answer their door. They won’t do anything. [They say,] ‘until she hurts you there is nothing we can do’.”

Moreno’s former mother in law has said she has “no idea” why Moreno chose Lakewood Church as her target.

In an interview with ABC 13, Wallia Carranza said the woman who opened fire in the church had changed enormously from the person whose son married back in 2016.

“Why she went to Lakewood, I have no idea. They’re Protestants,” said Ms Carranza. “The anti-Semitic part says she would have went to a synagogue.”