TexasCHLforum.com

Charles L. Cotton wrote:

louisf1 wrote:

DanD wrote:A truly amazing past 30 minutes. Truly amazing.

What is truly amazing is that walking past a 30:06 sign unintentionally is now going to be a class C misdemeanor.

This is more valuable than open-carry, in my view. 850,000+ CHL benefit from this protection from accidentally entering posted property.

Chas.

twomillenium wrote:Estes is not as well spoken as some, but he seems to get his point across.

Charles L. Cotton wrote:

fickman wrote:

K5GU wrote:I'm guessing that a LEO who sees a person with a holstered gun in public has it in his/her mind (suspects) that the person is not licensed, and thus is a criminal?

Or, maybe the LEO sees a person with a holstered gun in public and has it his/her mind (suspects) that the person HAS a license.

After all, the diligent LEO probably realizes that a criminal (or someone with criminal intent) would probably not expose the gun, for obvious reasons.

There's the concern.

The default perspective probably changes department by department, if not LEO by LEO.

Some cities are likely to antagonize open carriers to discourage the practice. I wouldn't put it past some to do a felony stop with guns drawn to intimidate legal open carriers, or to stop and demand to see the license (and call in a check to dispatch) every city block or so.

Most won't, but it's happened in other states.

For the ones that would never do this, the Amendment is insulting.

Also, I know many LEOs that are pro-2A to the core, but there's conflict when they start to think of losing flexibility in doing their job. Sometimes "suspicious" is determined using the smell test, and it doesn't write into a report very well. I can empathize with this - "it didn't seem right," "why?" "because I wasn't born yesterday." They want to keep as many avenues for stopping the suspicious person that fails the smell test as possible.

There are interesting intersections where conservative, pro-freedom, pro-America, and pro-LEO seem to have friction. I get the concerns over "militarization of police", but that is very insulting to most LEOs I know. Their perspective is that the bad guys are more organized and better funded than ever, and they are desperately trying to keep up. It's about safety. I get the discourse between "I don't have to answer that" and "You'd answer if you had nothing to hide." I am a principled / philosophical thinker at the core. I hate pragmatism, but I use it as a tool so that "perfect" doesn't become the enemy of "good" or "better".

All that to say, the law currently prohibits LEOs from gratuitously stopping legal gun owners without suspicion of another crime. Preemptively reasserting it in the law cause unnecessary friction with a group that would otherwise be very supportive. Will somebody abuse it? Probably. So then, with concrete examples, we come back and clean it up once we show the need. Sometimes you have to let story play out and we do ourselves a disservice by trying to fast forward to the end.

This is an excellent analysis. Well done.

Chas.

Maxwell wrote:

K5GU wrote:On HB910 conference report, http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/BillLook ... Bill=HB910" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The important stuff begins on page 43.

OK, so they are the same amendment, but I would say that the original House version is phrased significantly cleaner... Anyone that's passed High School English can tell that the Senate version was obviously written in such a way that it was intended to delay the passing of the bill.