Texas police officer inspects open carry weapon (courtesy theblaze.com)

Matt in FL found this gem buried inside a kinda dull report on Texas’ move towards open carry (or not) at star-telegram.com: “’When we become aware of protests or demonstrations in our city, Arlington police officers closely monitor the situation for the safety of our community, the demonstrators and counterdemonstrators,’ police spokeswoman Tiara Ellis Richard said. ‘It’s important to note that no two situations are alike; therefore our officers approach these incidents on a case-by-case basis. It’s important that neither officers nor community members become complacent if they observe someone in public with a weapon,’ she said. ‘Community members should immediately call 911 and allow officers to look into each incident to determine the lawfulness of conduct.'” Which is why Texas needs to restore residents’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. Or, as Matt in FL says, “Tiara kinda missed the point of the protests . . . Or perhaps not.”

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52 COMMENTS

    • Seriously, this is “gun-friendly”? It’s just ridiculous that Texas doesn’t have open carry for handguns.

        • It is all justified by “law and order” politics. Texas was the heart of the old west, that is where these laws came from.

          People had to contend with Statism even back then, that was their natural answer to banditry and savagery. The state doesn’t die but we do… so it always seems to win in the end.

        • Well, they’re not ideal, to be sure, but I wouldn’t call our concealed carry laws “onerous”, either. About $150 for the license abd prints. Another $75 or so for a four hour course. Then it’s a 4-8 week wait, depending on application volume and complexity of your own background, and the shall issue license is in your mailbox. Most prohibited places you’d go (federal property, schools) are so by D.C. mandate, not Texas’. Those that are state mandated (pro sporting events, theme parks, bars) are basically in line with other states.

          It should be constitutional carry, I agree, but compared to other states, I’ve definitely seen many worse.

        • Most prohibited places you’d go (federal property, schools) are so by D.C. mandate, not Texas’.

          Not schools. With a concealed carry permit issued by the state where the school is located, the federal GFSZA does not apply; in that case, if a school is a “prohibited place”, it’s by the state’s mandate, not D.C.’s.

          Those that are state mandated (pro sporting events, theme parks, bars) are basically in line with other states.

          Depends on the state, of course. For example, in Colorado (recent silliness notwithstanding), “pro sporting events, theme parks, bars” are not state-mandated prohibited places.

        • Washington state is $52.50 for the permit, no training required, and an absolute maximum of 30 days for processing before they must issue you a permit if no issues have arisen.

        • Montana has NO requirement for a concealed weapons permit outside of city limits. A permit IS required inside city limits;

          Requirements are $50 for the permit, prints (usually $5), and a hunter safety course (*or* a firearms safety or training course that uses instructors certified by a national firearms association *or* a law enforcement firearms safety or training course *or* a license from another state to carry a firearm, concealed or otherwise *or* proof of qualification from military service).

          Open Carry is unrestricted in most public areas (inside or outside of city limits) and generally accepted.

          I love this state.

      • Hey, you have to be careful – otherwise it might be Dodge City out there!

        Oh, wait, that was in Kansas, wasn’t it? But it was those Texas cowboys hoo-rahin’ the town at the end of the cattle drives, so Texas has to prevent that kind of lawless behavior on the part of its honest citizens exercising their First amendment rights -by trying to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Hey, bottom line for the brownshirts is you just can’t trust citizens with any rights at all.

    • Myth of being pro-gun is too strong a phrase. It’s more like that Texas does live up to the antis’ and pop culture’s myth of Texas being a wide open free for all like Somalia.

  4. Ha Arizona has always allowed open carry and up until the Kali’s have started coming here nobody even thought twice about being armed. Now I happily have my C.C.W. so I don’t scare the sheep.

    • You sure you live in AZ TW? AZ has constitutional carry, you don’t need a CCL to CC in AZ.. ( darn! Can’t think of more abbreviations)

      • Well, you do need a CCW to carry within 1000 feet of a school. And there are schools everywhere here in Phoenix. So, it’s not 100% necessary but definitely recommended.

        An additional benefit of AZ CCW, you don’t need to wait for an FFL to call NICS when you buy a gun at a store.

      • No you don’t but the vast methods of carrying are just the reason AZ is what everybody thinks Texas is. And besides the avoiding the NICS check is only part of the use of a CCW. Also there is the reciprocity of nearby states.

    • I’ve found myself saying that more and more as I got into guns and consequently, the politics of owning them. Seems that the ol’ Buckeye State is one of the best-kept secrets in gun rights.

      Although there is room for improvement… There’s technically a 30-round mag limit, but I see 30+ round mags sitting out in the open on gun store shelves all the time.

      • Currently, Ohio requires 12 hours training (10 classroom 2 range is the usual breakdown), fingerprints, fee, etc to get a CHL. The training requirement is generally seen as the reason we don’t have reciprocity with PA, since I’m pretty sure – and correct me if I’m wrong here – there’s no training requirement in PA. That may change soon, as HB203 in Ohio has passed the House and is headed for the Senate. Amongst its many benefits are reduction in the training requirement to 4 hours and automatic reciprocity for any state that recognizes OH CHLs. Stay tuned, things are good and getting better in OH.

        • Plus we have a bill that will hopefully come up for a vote soon that will repeal the ban on mags over 30 rounds.

  6. The real gem here is getting trigger right clan to walk individually and across a wide area at the same time, with their friends calling the police. Say about 300, In short overwhelming the police with calls and when they check out ” all is well” police may give up on lawful 2A display.

    • Or else have everyone in Arlington call 911 when they see a cop carrying a gun “openly”.

      “Hey, there’s a guy with a gun here! He’s wearing a dark-blue shirt [pick appropriate color of PD uniform]. Looks like some kind of militia type!”

      Do this from your $20 Tracfone you bought for cash at WalMart in a different city.

    • “It’s important that neither officers nor community members become complacent if they observe someone in public with a weapon.”

      And isn’t this just the opposite of the purpose of the movement which is to allow the community to become complacent when they understand that not everyone with a gun is a mass murderer? A police response that treats every person with a gun like a suspect is the exact opposite of the intended purpose, which may be the law enforcement intention. Not to mention that such harassment will have the effect of dampening the enthusiasm of gun-owners to carry.

  7. Arlington is an Agenda 21 supporting university town and the Startlegram is a McClatchey owned leftist rag.

    Having said all that: Those OCT cats aren’t doing us any favors. Noone would have known about or cared about a demanding moms meeting if they had not shown up. I have been to one of their rallys down here in Mansfield. A guy was carrying a sign “drop acid not bombs”. They seemed more like OWS types than constitutionalist.

    And I have been pulled over by APD while carrying and the guy was very cool about it, let me off with a warning when I deserved a ticket.

  8. I have family in Texas and we never visited them that much, but when we did I was kind of shocked. Texas is a great state, but it isn’t what people think it is who haven’t been there.

    I visited Austin for the first time on a road trip a few years ago and I had never been there, it really blew me away. Puts any liberal metro on the East or West Coast to shame and just has incredible natural beauty.

    But it is absolutely not a place where the locals want shit like open carry or any hint of violence of any kind, even if they will elect Ron Paul. Coincidentally, Ron has also been described to me as the “biggest nepotist in Congress” and the image he put forward for so long was all quite disingenuous. It was all just to set up his little brat son for a political career.

    They say don’t mess with Texas and I think that applies to 2A rights activists as well for the time being. Some common sense reforms would be great but the authorities down there are well established, often corrupt and set in their ways. Be wary if you try to push your luck and remember what happened to that lecherous, meth addled bastard in Dallas. The authorities down there gave their blessing to that, whatever else he was he was also the President and they didn’t blink, got away with it too.

    At least they’re cool with people using suppressors!

    • “not a place where the locals want shit like open carry or any hint of violence of any kind”

      OC is a hint of violence? Don’t let the locals know about boxing or MMA. They will absolutely flip out with all the OC hands dangling about.

    • It was a long time ago, but before we get too heavily invested in demonizing Austin we need to keep this in mind:

      Wikipedia: “Charles Joseph Whitman (June 24, 1941 – August 1, 1966) was an American engineering student and former U.S. Marine, who killed seventeen people and wounded thirty-two others in a mass shooting rampage located in and around the Tower of the University of Texas in Austin on the afternoon of August 1, 1966.”

  9. So can anyone tell me about a single incident of violence at any 2A rally in the last few years that these things have been going on in force?

    Hmmm… Yeah I’ll wait.

  10. It’s important that neither officers nor community members become complacent if they observe someone in public with a weapon

    Exactly. We wouldn’t want John Q Public to see an open carrier and not panic. Because that would make guns accepted in public, and we can’t have that.

    • If everyone carried, no one would be “complacent”. They would be “.situationally aware”. And they wouldn’t panic at the sight of a gun.

      I was just speculating with a friend about what it might be like if everyone carried all the time. Probably peaceful.

    • I’ve seen open carriers at rallies in cities, but only as a large group. I haven’t seen a lone activist or itherwise just walking down a city street. Were I to, it would more than raise an eyebrow with me. Broad daylight murders in public places, whether by a stalker spouse, disgruntled former employee, or just random street crime, happen every week here. A current favorite is dollar store robberies. And don’t get me started on the ubiquitous bank robberies.

      So we do live with ever present violence. For now, any open carrier on his own is going to attract police attention, even though long guns aren’t the weapon of choice among killers. Now, I wouldn’t call 911 unless they posed a serious threat I could credibly articulate, but even I would watch them closely until we parted ways.

      • That is a pretty good point actually.

        1 guy walking across the parking lot with an AR(in his hands) and I am definitely going orange.

        A bunch walking down the street, and I saw this recently with OCT in Mansfield, and I am/did think: Cool! what’s this all about? I gotta go check it out!

  11. Asking people to call police if anyone carries? That’s ridiculous, firearms should be common place enough to the point where people don’t even bat an eye, telling people to do that is like a sneaky way to say there’s a guaranteed threat in front of them. One day in my old neighborhood, there were two men loaded to the teeth, not even hiding the firearms or ammo, Glock in leg holster, S&W MP40 on the trunk of the car, boxes of Remington UMC, and a few other toys. I waved, complimented the choice of gun, and kept going. That’s how it should be, but everyone is so damn afraid of their own shadow today that its hard to see happening.

  12. The first “no guns allowed” (per some statute) sign I ever say was in a restaurant attached to a very nice hotel in Dallas–and I live in California. I was SHOCKED! I tell you, SHOCKED! Then again, we don’t have a law providing for an “approved” gun ban sign that carries actual criminal penalties either. So I couldn’t understand why Texas would be so hard core about limiting CCW carriers, especially in a “gun friendly” state. Does any other state have a similar law?

    • Unless it was the full blown 30.06 sign, 1″ letters in both English and Spanish, which basically takes up a 2’x3′ space on the door, then it was just a “make the insurance company happy” sign and we walk right past them.

      If it was the first one, take your money elsewhere.

    • California does not need such signs since the percentage of CCW patrons in California is miniscule and those who carry without a CCW don’t give a shit abut any sign anyway, they’re already breaking the law.

  13. I love Kentucky. Can carry in restaurants (just no bars), can open carry, don’t have to notify, and signs don’t carry force of law. Plus my total ccw cost was about $150 including training and license fees.

  14. All the talk here and elsewhere about “Texas is not as firearms friendly as X” fails to factor in the intangibles. Most(not all probably but I have not found them) law enforcement from TXDPS on down love them some concealed carrying armed citizens.

    Anecdotal evidince and my personal experience: TK’s post from a few days ago. (too lazy to link it)

    Granted the cost and hoops are shaded toward “onerous”, but we did just get a reduction in the amount of class time which gave a corresponding reduction in class cost.

    • I agree. The intangibles can be even more important than the laws themselves. The law can read whatever it wants, but ultimately it’s cops on the streets and D.A.’s in the suites who can jam you up but good, if they are so inclined. Sure, months of frustration and thousands of dollars later, you probably will prevail if you were in the right (or not); but that can be a Pyrrhic victory. After all, I once read that there’s a law somewhere stating that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Yet, there are a whole lot of government infringements out there, formal and casual alike.

  15. You can whine and carp and carry on about how evil the World is when it comes to packing rifles and shotguns in public places and how it should be just SO ordinary to see long guns carried into malls and Starbucks and maybe elementary schools that nobody would EVER call the cops. . .

    The reality is that it will NEVER be ‘normal’ to do this. Not ever. Rational people will still call the police, and that’s that.

    • Unless you live in a war zone (or Chicago) a long gun is not very appropriate for personal defense in public. IMO. This makes the carrying of such a weapon either a cause for legitimate concern, or a political statement. Either way you are going to attract some official inquiry into your actions and motives.

      The Open Carry (Constitutional Carry) of handguns which are definitely appropriate for personal defense (maybe not a Desert Eagle .50 or a .454 Casul, YMMV) should NEVER trigger an alarm until it leaves the holster.

    • So Texas should ease up and get rid of the restrictions that penalize citizens who wish to open carry handguns. Right now, long guns are the only option for open carry in Texas.

    • I think you’re missing the point. Very few people really want to carry rifles around town. The idea is just to normalize firearms freedoms in general, so that the next attempt to infringe on a facet of firearms freedom you actually *do* give a crap about might meet resistance from more than just diehard liberty lovers. Get it?

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