Before Reconstruction, Texas had the strongest right to bear arms amendment of any state in the United States. Even slaves had the right to keep and bear arms, as affirmed by the Texas Supreme Court in 1859. (The decision was Cockrum v. State.) (added) An expanded explanation of this is given in Stephen Halbrook’s article on The Right to Bear Arms in Texas, Section II C. And then things went seriously south; the legislature effectively banned both open and concealed carry for a hundred and thirty years.
The Texas Legislature only restored partial open carry rights last year. The fee for a License to Carry — required for open or concealed carry — is $140. That’s quite a whack, putting gun rights out of the reach for the state’s less economically fortunate residents. State Representative Jonathan Stickland wants to change that. From caller.com:
“It’s time in Texas to restore our Second Amendment rights to their originally intended level,” said state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, a Fort Worth-area Republican who last year spearheaded the successful open-carry bill.
This time, Stickland is the chief author of legislation supporters call “constitutional carry.” Unlike the open-carry bill, the new measure does not require a license — or the passing of a gun-safety test and the payment of a $140 fee for the license — to allow a handgun to be carried either openly or concealed.
If Texas enacts Constitutional Carry, Texas won’t be breaking new ground. Eleven other states already have permit less carry — without the predicted “blood in the streets.” Four states passed Constitutional carry last year: Idaho, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Missouri. Several other states are considering removing infringements on the carry of arms in 2017.
Stickland, who begins his third two-year term when the Legislature convenes January 10, pushed hard for a similar bill in 2015. Lawmakers were unwilling to go that far. This year, Stickland has a well-placed ally for at least addressing the license fee: Lt. Governor Daniel Patrick. While Patrick’s not ready to make the leap to permitless carry, he’s pushing to reduce the fee for the Texas License to Carry.
“Texas has one of the highest license-to-carry fees in the country,” Patrick said. “No Texan should be deprived of their right to self-protection because of onerous licensing fees imposed by the state.”
Constitutional carry may not pass, but the Texas legislature is bound to reduce the license fee. John “More Guns Less Crime” Lott has concluded that the more a permit costs the lower the number of people who get one. It’s not a great leap to think that the more people who have a Texas License to Carry the greater the support for Constitutional Carry. We shall see.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included. Gun Watch
Joe “Quisling” Strauss will probably oppose this bill.
Precisely. He has stated openly that he will not consider Constitutional carry ever. Plus he has a visceral, personal hatred Of Stickland
Go Lone Star.
Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease….
I don’t wanna pay another $140 for my civil rights again… and another for the wife’s, plus certification fees, etc.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/teenager-brings-guns-school-parents-disarm-him-091646717.html
Guess you guys are going to ignore what happened.
(Here’s a hint, The commenters on the story don’t agree with you.)
Whether this passes or not is up to the reaction from the sheriffs and LEO unions.
Licensed open carry was set to sail through the legislature until the LEOs threw a fit; that derailed the whole process and led to removing an amendment that would have instructed the officers that they can’t harass someone just because they see he’s open carrying.
Votes in support disappeared so long as the cops opposed it. It was only by stripping that amendment out (and tacitly agreeing to allow the cops to stop people and demand to see a license) that the LEOs backed off, and the votes came.
If the LEOs are resistant again, the Constitutional Carry bill will die again. If Stickland wants to get this passed, he should be meeting with the LEO union immediately and doing what he can to get them on board. If they oppose it, scads of senators will oppose it; one of the most valued endorsements is for a senator to say that they’ve been endorsed by law enforcement, and as we saw last time, there’s lots of them who will not jeopardize that no matter what.
… yeah yeah, don’t feed the troll.
No one here cares what the commenters have to say about it on y@hoo. Other than that, I really don’t see what your point is to bringing this situation up. No one was injured or killed, the kid was apparently mentally unstable. The law was broken already, what do you intend the outcome of this to be? More laws? More illegaler? For the most part on this site; if there is no point to posting or linking it, it does not get posted. This applies to your story as well, there is no point to regurgitating it.
Here’s a hint for you: provide your argument logically here on this blog, and you will be provided with responses. I believe that you already have been provided responses that are well thought out and critical of your views, along with some other responses that were not so well worded that directed vitriol in your direction.
Bah. That wasn’t (obviously) meant to be a reply to the moron who posted the non-event article and somehow thinks there’s value in Yahoo commenters, but oh well, the time to edit it has run out.
In response to the gun-grabbing tyrant: go away.
Someone broke the law. What is your solution to that?
If your solution is to throw the kid in jail for the rest of his life to make sure he can’t break it again that might make sense. I don’t think it’s viable, but it makes sense.
If your ‘solution’ is to make more laws thinking that somehow that will help, you need some help with logic.
Unfortunately for you this isn’t the Yahoo comments section.
AAPGTyrant, that incident has absolutely nothing to do with concealed carry, open carry, or ANY kind of carry. The kid was a rogue, a wild card, who apparently broke into his parents’ gunsafe.
Before Reconstruction, Vermont had the strongest right to bear arms constitution and laws of any state in the United States. Texas, as with most other things by way of comparison to the Green Mountain State, was a close second.
Fixed.
Bring it! And soon!
I’ve never been a big proponent of the open carry – why not avoid the hassles – but do conceal-carry every day. I didn’t let the fee stop me, but it would sure be nice for whichever way this goes, or one before the other.
Patrick already filed the $0 CHL bill. Free nationwide carry for Texas citizens coming soon, plus CC for people who don’t travel or want on a list.
Patrick can’t file any bill. He’s Lt Governor, not a Senator or Representative.
He has gone on record as supporting SB16, which was filed by Senator Nichols, saying: “Texas has one of the highest license to carry fees in the country. SB 16 will make lawful carry more affordable for law abiding citizens across the state. No Texan should be deprived of their right to self-protection because of onerous licensing fees imposed by the state.
“I strongly support this legislation and commend Sen. Nichols for his dedication and leadership to further support 2nd Amendment Rights.”
SB16 removes the $140 fee. It will be interesting to see whether this passes, since it reflects a direct reduction in government revenues, and furthermore potentially expands the amount of work the government is expected to do since we can presume that applications will increase, which means the government would be having to conduct background checks, print up and issue licenses, mail them, etc., with no revenues directly attributed to these expenses.
I have said since day 1 that if the people of Texas want big-time training and licensing for TX carry (I don’t think they GAS), then they will be happy to pay for it. Cost of permit=$0, cost of instruction=$0, each LE department is required to provide state-ordered training without reimbursement. Constitutional carry in one week flat. Follow the money!
“John “More Guns Less Crime” Lott has concluded that the more a permit costs the lower the number of people who get one”
Wow I never would have figured…..
Sometimes science consists of providing numbers that confirm common sense.
Common sense is not always all that common.
It’s almost as if governments in states like NY, MD, CA, etc want to institute a regressive tax that disproportionately punishes the poor for exercising a right!
Say it ain’t so.
This is how the anti-gun movement dies, once and for all. Think about it; until now, the great majority of the nation’s populace have lived under licensing schemes for at least four generations. Until the most recent versions of the map at the top of the page, the great majority didn’t even have that much, and carry was effectively banned.
Texas and Florida are truly massive populations at this point, and still growing rapidly. CA and NY will *not* be able to dictate terms to the rest of the nation, or really anyone outside their own borders to be honest, with any real effectiveness. Hell, they already can’t, as we saw post-Newtown (“if only those kids had died ten years sooner”). If both Florida and Texas cast off licensing altogether, you’re talking a very large minority of the US population growing up under the outright *absence* of these schemes, for whom they will be totally foreign in a generation or so. NICS has shown us that people get accustomed to needless infringement and even come to expect it, yet simultaneously do reject additional restriction for the most part.
Removing all pretense of “mother may I” for this issue in such a large voter pool as Texas, is the beginning of the end for gun control writ large. If I can carry a gun wherever I please for the most part without asking, why the hell am I waiting over a year on the ATF to let me cut a barrel down or shoulder a SIG brace? If no one knows whether I’m carrying a gun legally, not even the state, why should they know that I’m safely shooting on my own land quietly by way of a silencer so as to not annoy the neighbors? Putting the .gov in as middleman between the people and their arms is the entire purpose of licensing/registration schemes, and since there’s nothing in the way of subsidies it’s obvious the goal has always been to obstruct. Constitutional Carry removes them from the picture on at least one issue, but in so doing totally undermines the justification for their presence on other issues like weapon configuration, manufacture, storage, or transport. It’s gonna be hard to argue “blood in the streets” if SBRs are deregulated when anyone can carry a Glock around town without asking.
Well stated. It may take 40 years for it all to come true though.
Missouri isn’t quite Constitutional Carry, to open carry in KC and STL requires a CCL. Odd I know, I license to conceal to open carry…
Hopefully the freedom train will pick up a lot of speed next year.
This map again… NJ, MD, HI, etc are not “may issue,” regardless of what they say to try and obscure the issue.
$140…
Sounds like a deal….
In San Bernardino County California, a pro 2A county (essentially shall issue policy) as California goes, your fees are:
Time off work to go interview at the sherif’s office.
$108 fingerprinting.
$30.60 admin / background non-refundable deposit.
$100 for an 8 hour class.
$122.40 admin / background balance when you receive your permit.
More time off work to pick up your permit.
And last but not least a year long wait for all of it to happen.
That’s $361 not counting lost wages, if I added it up correctly – all that and I consider myself one of the fortunate few in the state.
and in new york city to renew your pistol permit its $340.00 dollars and for first timers its $340.00 and 95.00 for finger printing.and with the new police commissoner o,neil he says there enough guns already in new york.and every time you renew theres a new piece of paper with more rules.guess he hasn,t read the dick act of 1902-gun control forbidden,the dick act of 1902-can,t be repealed{gun control forbidden}its protection against a tyrannical government.the dick act of 1902 also known as the efficiency of militia bill h.r. 11654 of june 28,1902 it invalidates all so-called gun-control laws.
It looks like Texas is trying to get me to move there when I retire someday. Oregon is doing their best to keep my out with Gov. Brown(shirt) and her anti self defense agenda.
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