After wading through the Texas CHL Forum, the arguments against open carry seem to boil down to:
1. ZOMG! It might scare people into putting up a no guns allowed sign.
2. No one open carries where it’s legal anyway so why bother.
3. The current bill isn’t good enough, I’ll support open carry when there’s a good bill. (but don’t bother asking me to help write a better bill)
That’s some pretty weak sauce.
The two big TSRA backed bills this session were the Parking Lot bill and Campus Carry. Representative Lavender specifically asked the TSRA for support on HB2756 and was turned down. They can claim they’re not against open carry all day long, but the reality is that no open carry bill will make it through the legislature without the support of the TSRA.
Texas will not have open carry unless and until the TSRA supports it.
Pardon me while I don’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
Another I hear quite often is “ZOMG people will be carrying around guns without TRAINING.” As if someone a person who took a CCW class for a day or a few hours is somehow safe and a OC’er who has never taken such a class is a dangerous liability.
“No one open carries where it’s legal anyway so why bother.”
A valid point….until you look at the cases where people were Jailed, fined, or lost property because they failed to conceal a gun properly on their person.
Sure Bubba, you may not want to open carry….but how do you feel if you shirt get’s bumped over your holster, or you trip and fall and your holster gets exposed, or the wind blows your coat open?
Izzat worth some time in Jail?
And now you see what we have to put up with in Texas…our largest gun group is headed by a bunch of FUDDs want to keep CHL limited and their efforts in the Legislature limited. We need a Gura here and all we have is a Cotton….
1. Has not happened in the states where it is legal.
2. Yes. We do.
3. Piss off, you obstructionist jackhole. Lead, follow, or get the gorramed hell out of the way.
*sigh* It always disappoints the hell out of me when I see supposedly pro-rights individuals looking for any excuse not to support rights. I am only thankful that TN was set up to avoid criminalizing accidental “flashing”, and thus OC is, by default, legal.
Weerd: no. There is no crime for accidentally failing to conceal. There is a crime for intentional failure to conceal. Intent has to be proven, and that’s not easy in Texas. To my knowledge, there have been 3 convictions for such a crime since CHL became law in 1995, and they have all involved the intentional display of a firearm for the purposes of intimidation. I know of 3 or 4 instances during that same time period (*one* in the past several years) of someone being falsely arrested for unintentionally failing to conceal, and those were sorted out without trial.
Regarding Alan’s commentary on why the TSRA has not supported the current bill: The bill was filed at the last minute (just like last session), was not well-thought-out (just like last session), and has serious potential for impact carry for existing CHL holders. Planning for legislation by the TSRA starts at the end of each legislative cycle, not at the last minute when the session has already started. If a group or organization wants to work with the TSRA, they need to start well in advance of a legislative session. Both occurrences of OC bills did not do this, opting until the session was well under weigh to introduce a bill. I cannot say that I feel sorry for them when their bills are not endorsed. If OC proponents are serious about getting legislation passed, they need to get serious about planning their bills.
Personally, I’m in favor of OC. It is not, however, at the top of my list. I’m more concerned with students/faculty/staff of universities and colleges in Texas being able to prepare themselves with effective tools against robbery, rape, assault, and murder. That is one of the priority items pushed by the TSRA this session, and I believe it to be considerably more important than Open Carry.
There are a limited number of pieces of legislation that can be feasibly pushed through in any given session with proper planning for opposition and contingencies. This year, it was Campus Carry and Parking Lot legislation. I’m a TSRA member, and I support the organization for the unrelenting work it has done for gun rights in Texas for the past two decades to bring us where we are.
So…does this mean that TSRA is incapable of publically stating that they support OC or even VT/AK-style carry? Or even state that CHL requirements or fees need to be reduced to match other RTC states? A press release is cheap…unless TSRA really doesn’t support these things….