Open carry passage potential in Texas

[Dosproduction]

Yeah im surprised that Texas did not already have this. Come on now the lone star state. Guns and cowboys is what I think of when some one says Texas

 

[hooky]

Guys I know in Texas always tell me to move down there. "We love our guns here." Then you start talking with them about their jacked up gun laws and comparing them to ours. We have it way better, except for our jacked up hunting laws.

 

[cbhausen]

Yeah im surprised that Texas did not already have this. Come on now the lone star state. Guns and cowboys is what I think of when some one says Texas

I see Indiana's LTCH as an instrument of infringement. Anything short of Constitutional Carry is. And while the Hoosier state works on this there are Federal firearms laws to go after as well. Last Tuesday was a step in the right direction. Don't let up; never let up.

 

[pudly]

Quote of the Day:

Jerry Patterson: "There is no reason to restrict liberty in any way if exercising that liberty is not hurtful. Open carry is not hurtful."

 

[Blackhawk2001]

A far cry from when I lived and worked in Houston in the 80s when carrying a handgun was prohibited to Texans unless you were a cop or a licensed security officer. Of course, people could "open carry" shotguns and rifles in their pickup trucks - which meant that the road-rage shootouts on the Houston expressways generally involved shotguns at five paces instead of handguns. And, of course, the fact that carrying a handgun was against the law for most of us didn't keep people from doing it anyway. It took the Luby's Cafeteria massacre in Killeen to wake Texans up and start the ball rolling for concealed carry again. I'm hopeful that Texas will once again approve open carry for its citizens and will do it soon.

 

[Lebowski]

I was floored to hear that they didn't allow it already. I would think they would be one of the states who don't even require a Larry.

They're not that lax. I looked into this recently as someone was trying to sell me a fair amount of acreage way down south in Texas. Too south. Walking distance of the Mexican border. No thanks. Later I had a job offer that would require me to move to the 4th largest US City... Houston. Humored the thought, looked into, but decided no, that isn't for me.

Anyhow, while looking into all of that above I too was shocked that they're not as lax as I previously thought. No OC, printing is illegal because printing = no longer concealed. Yes, that is correct. Can't carry in any place that derives the majority of it's income from alcohol sales, so they have 51% stickers on doors of establishments meaning 51% or more of their sales involve alcohol, meaning you can't carry there. Pulled over? Tell the cop you're carrying. No gun sign in the door of a business? It's not a suggestion, it's the law. Don't carry there. (Though their signs do need to meet certain requirements).


In fact, Texas isn't really all that gun friendly when you consider just how free we are here in Indiana. Texans are very proud people, but they've fooled themselves into thinking they're the freest.


Indiana is a great state.


EDIT: http://www.handgunlaw.us/states/texas.pdf

 

[Alamo]

This is all happening in spite of those OCT morons?

You need to remove the purple.

As I said in the other threads, I don't see how the Gov. is the problem.

...

You are correct. The Governor can only sign or veto bills that get to his desk. I like Abbott, but truthfully it was very easy for him to say he would sign an OC of handguns bill, since he can't really be held accountable for it. If it happens, he'll have the legislature behind him, and if a bill doesn't come through, not his fault.

I doubt there are any gunowners in Texas who really oppose OC of handguns, but there are many who will oppose it if an OC bill ends up jeopardizing the current extent of concealed carry and gun rights overall, which some of the OC legislation proposed in the past has. Also, the OCT crowd has alienated legislators, thus jeopardizing gun legislation in general.

A higher priority for most gunowners is removing more limits from concealed carry, such as ditching the 51% business, expanding campus carry, lowering or removing penalties for trespass with a firearm, etc. It's hard to tell what is being worked on behind the scenes, but I think the goal, or one of them, is to have licensed concealed carry everywhere a peace officer can carry.

printing is illegal because printing = no longer concealed. Yes, that is correct.

This is NOT correct, and it has never been correct since concealed carry was passed way back when. For that matter unintentional exposure not a crime either. This does not prevent the timid from obsessing about "printing," but this has never been a real issue in Texas.

Can't carry in any place that derives the majority of it's income from alcohol sales, so they have 51% stickers on doors of establishments meaning 51% or more of their sales involve alcohol, meaning you can't carry there. Pulled over? Tell the cop you're carrying. No gun sign in the door of a business? It's not a suggestion, it's the law. Don't carry there. (Though their signs do need to meet certain requirements).

Unfortunately some of this is still in the mix. When the Republicans started gaining strength in Texas in the 90s, things like concealed carry started gaining strength as well. In order to get it going at all, some compromises with the OMG! crowd in the legislature at that time came into being, and much of law enforcement was opposed in the beginning. As time goes on, the restrictions have been scaled back. The Dems did a lot of damage during their 120+ year run, it takes some time to undo it all.

Mr. Freeman believes I risk the spontaneous implosion of INGO if I discuss the various hues of the 51% business, but I think it is safe to say as a practical matter this turns out not to be a terribly limiting factor. We'd all like to see it go away as an unnecessary restriction, but if we have to choose, there are bigger fish to fry than 51%.

While it is a legal requirement to inform a Texas peace officer (but not a federale) if you are carrying under the authority of a CHL if he asks for ID, there is no legal penalty for not doing so.

Property rights as well as gun rights are valued in Texas, and thus it was felt it should be within the property owner's power to decide who carries what on his property. Thus the law supports the property owner if he chooses to not allow concealed carry. However, the proliferation of all kinds of signs made it problematic in practice. Thus the "30.06" requirement was born, requiring that the property owner or his agent give "effective notice" that concealed carry is not allowed. This primarily done through signage, and a sign must meet legal requirements in both language (big and bilingual) and size (about 2'x2'). Because it is such a big and tightly spec'd sign, the practical effect is that very very few private establishments ban concealed carry. The few legally sufficient signs I see are generally in large corporate buildings that have corporate legal staffs and insurance carriers that demand these things. Notably, government-owned or -leased buildings, with few exceptions (e.g. courts, schools, prisons), may not forbid concealed carry inside their buildings. Not even police stations can ban concealed carry in the public areas, and they must provide storage for a CHL'ers handgun if he needs to go into the restricted areas.

It appears to me that prior to shall-issue concealed carry, Texans who wanted to carry a gun simply did so, regardless of the law. Carrying handguns on private land was legal, and lot of private lands were pretty big. Long arms always were legal to "open carry" in public, and were preferred out in the rural areas anyway, so carry issues weren't a big issue until the last few decades. I think the 1968 Gun Control Act, the leftward lurch of the Democratic party in power, and its subsequent attempts to tighten gun control eventually led to backlash. As I said, it is taking time to undo much of this.

 

[Alamo]

I do not recall Perry saying anything about open carry. The problem was in the legislature not the Gov's office.

IIRC open carry was chubbed in 2011 and 2013. We shall see what happens in 2015 in Texas.

I don't remember Perry addressing open carry directly, but he did say that he thought there should be no restrictions on where one should be able to carry a handgun. Doesn't matter anyway, since the Gov is not the driver on these things. As I said in the other thread, I like Abbott, certainly voted for him, but his statement was an "I like mom and apple pie" kind of thing.

I don't think OC was really chubbed. Most political effort involving guns in Texas has been devoted to expanding licensed concealed carry, most Texas gun owners see that as more important than OC (and OC will certainly face the same, maybe more, restrictions as OC if OC passes). In particular last legislature a big push was made for campus carry, and it would have passed if it had been allowed a vote on the floor of the house. That issue sucked up a lot of political energy Unfortunately the Speaker of the House, Joe Straus, is widely believed to have purposely killed it by not scheduling it for a vote. Why this is so gets to be a story, but not many gun owners happy with him on that. We shall see this time.

 

[Lebowski]

This is NOT correct, and it has never been correct since concealed carry was passed way back when. For that matter unintentional exposure not a crime either. This does not prevent the timid from obsessing about "printing," but this has never been a real issue in Texas.

Apologies if the printing comment was incorrect, I was going on what I had read on Texas gun forums. I recall it being mentioned that "putting a thin white shirt on over a concealed gun where it prints is not concealed if it's printing and someone knows it's a gun" (or something along those lines) After a quick Google search I see that it's a debunked Texas carry myth

 

[pudly]

Didn't take long. A licensed open carry bill has been submitted in Texas for consideration. Constitutional carry may be too big of a hurdle to overcome right now, so this simple change seems like a good step forward.

Texas Legislator Files Licensed Open Carry Bill - The Truth About Guns

 

[Kirk Freeman]

I don't know why the media hopped onto the change in the Gov's office as being significant in any manner, but I wish the good people of Texas all the best.

I just hope I can take my jacket off down there. It was 84F in April!!!

Things are getting much better down there. I have been going since '95 when one could not legally carry and can testify as to how the culture is getting better and better down there.

 

[Alamo]

Apologies if the printing comment was incorrect, I was going on what I had read on Texas gun forums. I recall it being mentioned that "putting a thin white shirt on over a concealed gun where it prints is not concealed if it's printing and someone knows it's a gun" (or something along those lines) After a quick Google search I see that it's a debunked Texas carry myth

Oh, no problem a'tall, but it is an old Texas myth that is hard to kill, so felt compelled to jump on it with both boots. (Justin ropers if you must know).

 

[Alamo]

I just hope I can take my jacket off down there. It was 84F in April!!!

So you were here in the cool season. It's about 77F right now. Beats what I experienced in Indiana last week.

 

[Alamo]

Didn't take long. A licensed open carry bill has been submitted in Texas for consideration. Constitutional carry may be too big of a hurdle to overcome right now, so this simple change seems like a good step forward.

Texas Legislator Files Licensed Open Carry Bill - The Truth About Guns

There are no "open carry," otherwise known as "OC", bills filed (yet).

There are, however, two "unconcealed carry" bills filed that I know of. Thus Texas shall have "UC" if one of them passes.

I dunno why it was easier to go add "or unconcealed carry" after every instance of "concealed carry," but apparently it was. So UC.

There is also a constitutional carry bill, HB195. And it covers not only handguns, but "illegal knives" and clubs. Partay! It removes the licensing requirement altogether AFAIK, which might cause us some travel problems in other states. It raises the requirement for peace officer to be able to disarm handgun carriers from "reasonably believes" "for safety" to "probable cause" of "poses imminent threat." I think there's little chance of it passing, it will mostly be newspaper fodder and scare the faint of heart.

There are two UC bills, very similar, one seems to be a mess, the other not so bad. Both are "licensed [STRIKE]open [/STRIKE]unconcealed carry" bills.

HB106, the one linked by TTAG, is the messy one. It screws up the no-trespassing-by-those-with-guns signage, really makes a hash of it, requires open...er, unconcealed carry to be in a belt or shoulder holster, and requires "two points of resistance", by which it means a retention holster with two levels, I guess. I think the law should not get into THAT at all, it will just be a mess, requiring cops and prosecutors to use their discretion on whether a holster is legal for open carry and all that. Also means about 99% of CC rigs could not be used for OC. Bad news IMHO.

The other one, HB164, creates a separate signage requirement, Section 30.07, identical to 30.06 except for unconcealed carry. If that makes not sense to you, don't worry, just accept that this is much better than HB106. It still requires UC to be a belt or shoulder holster, but no retention requirements.

Both bills just basically add "or unconcealed" to the part on negotiating reciprocity agreements and making proclamations, but I wonder if Texas will have to redo all those if UC passes? Hope not.

Filing bills is the easy part. We shall see.

 

[ArcadiaGP]

Constitutional Carry Bill Introduced In Texas - Bearing Arms

 

[Alamo]

This link https://www.texasfirearmscoalition.com/index.php/bill-status-report shows all the 2A/firearms-related bills filed for the 84th Texas Legislature so far, and the gentleman who created it, Mr. Cotton, keeps it updated as time goes on. He is also one of, if not the most significant, legislative rep for the Texas State Rifle Association and NRA in Texas, and has been for about three decades, I think.

ETA: It seems there will be at least two more UC (OC) bills filed in the House and the Senate. I believe these will be the TSRA-written ones.

 

[ModernGunner]

Another step in the right direction, as BNB noted.

And yes, the OCT guys are still

 

[bingley]

Just move to a liberal state like Vermont for constitutional carry.

 

[Alamo]

There are now four open carry bills filed in for the Texas House. Far more importantly though, there is a bill (HB 308, by NRA A+ rated Representative Springer) filed that removes pretty much all off-limit locations for holders of concealed carry licenses. It also removes the special classes of license holders (e.g. judges, prosecuting attorneys) who were exempt from some of the off-limit places (like courtrooms).

On my first pass through it appears the only restrictions are carrying while intoxicated and intentionally failing to conceal a handgun, and the penalties for those are reduced from Class A to Class C Misdemeanors (unless you get caught more than once). There might be an additional infraction for commissioned security guards who are also carrying concealed, but I can't tell at first read -- the interplay between the concealed handgun license statutes and the commissioned security guard statutes was complicated, and it appears a good deal of that conflict has been removed as well. But that will take some study to confirm.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

There are now four open carry bills filed in for the Texas House. Far more importantly though, there is a bill (HB 308, by NRA A+ rated Representative Springer) filed that removes pretty much all off-limit locations for holders of concealed carry licenses. It also removes the special classes of license holders (e.g. judges, prosecuting attorneys) who were exempt from some of the off-limit places (like courtrooms).

On my first pass through it appears the only restrictions are carrying while intoxicated and intentionally failing to conceal a handgun, and the penalties for those are reduced from Class A to Class C Misdemeanors (unless you get caught more than once). There might be an additional infraction for commissioned security guards who are also carrying concealed, but I can't tell at first read -- the interplay between the concealed handgun license statutes and the commissioned security guard statutes was complicated, and it appears a good deal of that conflict has been removed as well. But that will take some study to confirm.

In HB308, what locations are still prohibited?