The “Open Carry” movement, which was advocating for a change to Texas’ concealed carry law to allow guns to be worn in plain view, appears to have failed as no bill was filed to achieve this end.
[A]fter months lobbying the Legislature, members of the grassroots gun group [OpenCarry.org] have conceded that they could not persuade any Texas lawmaker to file open carry legislation this session, said Ian McCarthy, a student who chairs the Texas Open Carry Work Group.
“I’ve been calling, meeting, doing everything but nobody wants to introduce it,” he said.
It’s not as if there wasn’t ample interest among lawmakers, McCarthy said, but “most of them are just loaded down with so many bills they’ve already introduced.”
State Rep. Debbie Riddle, whom the open carry folks tagged months ago as the bills presumptive sponsor, had the legislation drafted but never introduced it. Her chief of staff explained to open carry members in an email that such legislation was unlikely to pass and that talks of an open carry proposal have already caused difficulties for other Second Amendments bills.
I find this more than a little surprising, but as had been noted before, this may have been a bit of a turf battle.
In the roughly six months since the group started fundraising through online donations to pay for radio spots, billboards and advertising on taxi’s across Texas, they apparently did little to gain favor with the gun lobby.
The Texas State Rifle Association, a state affiliate of the National Rifle Association, never publicly supported the proposal, saying instead they were focusing this session on their current agenda, which did not include open carry. Ultimately, the lack of support from the influential gun lobby could have doomed the group’s efforts to get a bill introduced, open carry members opined on their forums.
I have a hard time believing that a bill like this can’t get passed in Texas. But it’ll have to wait till next session.
Except for the “exposing Texas to ridicule” aspect, I can’t see how open carry is any worse than carrying a concealed weapon. If anything, the deterrent factor might actually work. I sure wouldn’t mess with (or even have anything at all to do with) a man wearing a pistol on his hip.
Good riddance to this idea. We do not need to appear as if we are in the days of the wild west.
cb,
I think you need to do your homework. 44 of the 50 states in this country allow open carry, including my birth state of Massachusetts which is an extremely “liberal” state. I know that’s an oxymoron, but I digress. I live in Texas (3yrs) and am embarrassed that you can not open carry here. We are one of ONLY 6 states with such laws including California and New York, two states that have some of the worst crime in the country especially in their big cities with gun crime. In fact the “wild west” was not like that Hollywood leads you to believe. In reality, the “wild west” had lower crime rates not only than cities do today but the cities back then that had these anti gun laws, partially in part to the fact that they had open carry.
“Do your research before you speak”