City of Mission, Texas ignores law

#1

Yet another city has thumbed its municipal nose at Texas law. The Mission City Counsel voted 4-0 to ban CHL holders from carrying handguns in certain city buildings, in direct violation of Texas law. SB501 should have taken care of this problem in 2003. Unfortunately, these elected officials apparently feel they are above the law. Here is an article: http://www.themonitor.com/SiteProcessor ... ion=Valley

This is infuriating not only because it violates SB501/Penal Code 30.06 and Penal Code Section 46.03(c)(1), but also because our elected officials should be poster children for law abiding citizens. What message are they sending to their citizens when they admit they have been conspiring to do this since 2003?

We have the Texas Municipal League (TML) to thank for advocating this type of blatant disregard of Texas law and Legislative intent. (In fairness, the City of Mission doesnâ€™t care one whit what TML or anyone else says, so itâ€™s my opinion they would have done this anyway.) After the passage of SB501, TML published its position on the new statute in the Legal Q&A section of the September 2003 issue of Texas Town & City magazine. Therein, TML opined that a city could render an entire building off limits solely by placing a small court clerk office anywhere in the building. I called the TML attorney who wrote the opinion and discussed this erroneous advice. Although he had no response to my statement that the rules of statutory construction require that courts give meaning to every word in a statute, including the express definition of "premises" that contains the phrase "portion of a building," he arrogantly said, "well, that's our position and we aren't going to change it."

Soap box mode off.

I'm going to start another thread "Cities improperly posting 30.06 signs." Please let me know of any city or other governmental entity or agency that is posting 30.06 signs where they are not warranted by Texas statute. I am particularly interested in the posting of a 30.06 sign where only a portion of a building is being used for an activity that is statutorily off-limits to CHL's. For example, some cities are putting a court clerk's office in city hall and declaring the entire building off-limits. At least one city has posted its library with 30.06 signs, solely because one of its schools occasionally has class field days there on "library days."

I know about Baytown City Hall, but I need Baytown to post the specifics.

Chas.

Greybeard · #2

City of Highland Village left theirs up. But, their relatively new complex housed court well before Sept. 1,2003 - as well as cop shop, parks and rec. dept., etc.

#3

Greybeard:
Only the courtroom would be off-limits, if I understand your post. I take it Highland Village has a large building that houses the municipal court, as well as the police department, water dept., etc.?

If so, this is another city to put on the list.

Thanks,
Chas.

Baytown · #4

Charles PM sent.

Glenn

Baytown · #5

I just read the link to the Monitor article.

Dear Lord, someone hit these people in the head and knock some common sense into them. The state law was passed two years ago and for two years no CHL ever shot anyone for charging them too much for water, and no CHL holder had a gun go off and kill someone!!!!!!

That place down there is nothing but a Democrat stronghold that loves to sue everybody for everything. Let's just close all the roads to and from the Valley and let them self destruct. JMHO.

Glenn

Greybeard · #6

Chas -

' Been out of town for a few.

As I recall explanation at DPS renewal skuli n Aug. 03, interp. then was that court could make whole building off-limits.

Yep, HV Complex has got 1" vinyl stick on letters on glass. Or at least did last time I was there. I'm not a resident of HV, but did a little biz there last spring when coaching boys baseball. PM me if I need to go back that way, maybe with a camera ...