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Just so you know, in Texas, financial responsibility may be proven by an insurance policy (most common for individuals), posting of a surety bond, depositing cash or securities with the comptroller, depositing cash with the county judge, or by being a qualified self-insurer. To qualify as a self-insurer, you must have at least 25 vehicles in your name and convince the DPS that you can pay damages from any accidents. DPS rules say that to qualify for self-insurance, you must have monthly receipts that exceed operating expenses by at least $255,000 (three $85,000 accidents). An instersting side note is that the law says an individual may qualify for self-insurance while DPS rules only say a company can.

Charlies.Contingency wrote:Not well put. I know everybody would like to think everything get to be perfectly "fair", it isn't. The law is not written giving you the same amount of rights as an officer, or to make either actions mean the same. The officer can do things you can't in a flip flopped point of view.

Can you start digging around in your pocket just because the officer did? Is it unfair that it 's seen as a possible threat to the officer, but not to you? It seems like ya'll WANT to think you have a defense to prosecution if you pull your gun on an officer , or because you shoot an officer, because you "FELT" threatened by the officers actions. The law clearly defines the use of force you may use against an officer.

I strongly disagree Charles. I believe it was fairly well put. The act is either aggressive or it isn't and which side unsnaps does not make a difference in whether or not it is an aggressive act. It might, possibly, make a difference in if the aggression is justified or not, but that is a different question.

And I would love for you to show me where any law gives more rights to the police officer to take action without legal justification than it does to the citizen. As a matter of fact, the law even specifies that a citizen may use force to defend himself from unlawful force used by an officer. You and I may have been trained to tell people to keep their hands in sight, but I sincerely doubt you can find a law backing up that training. I can start digging around in my pockets anytime I want, as can the officer. I can unsnap my holster and be prepared when the officer pulls me over if I so desire, just as the officer can. And, I am fairly confident that I can find a lot more shootings of citizens by police that were ruled unjustified than I can of police officers by CHLs, making the officer's actions even less justified based on the story as told by the OP.

Ask the officers and former officers on the board how many would unsnap when pulling a car over? I have lost track of the number of times I did that. Now ask how many would unsnap after pulling the car over when they found the driver had a CHL? I never did and I doubt any of the officers on this board did either (while admitting that this is a biased sample). I think the aggressive act was simply unjustified and unjustifiable.

And I do agree with C-Dub that this has been an interesting turn, and I want to add another twist back towards the original discussion. I may have missed something but I think we all jumped to the conclusion that it was a new officer. I find no reason to truly believe this. We may be deluding ourselves, but there are a lot of officers out there who really do not think citizens should be armed and not all of them are rookies. Would it make a difference in our opinions if we knew that the officer simply did not believe in the Second Amendment that as strongly as we do?