TexasCHLforum.com

jimlongley wrote:

Beiruty wrote:

They removed the amendment, which makes sense to me, because that amendment is not needed anyway. There are already laws in place that require LEOs to have a reason before asking to see your CHL.
http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/D" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... /CR.14.htm

As it is a crime to open carry a sidearm without a CHL, the mere observation of person with a holster handgun is an articulated suspicion for LEO to stop the suspect and check his CHL.

I feel exactly the opposite. Absent any reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is taking place, open carry in and of itself must be treated as not criminal and does not justify a stop to check CHL, just as it is not an articulated suspicion that anyone driving a car is doing so without a license.

thechl wrote:

Charles L. Cotton wrote:

thechl wrote:Didn't we just celebrate the passing of SB273? Isn't that a bill that merely reiterates current Texas law, but then adds a penalty because municipalities are ignoring that law with impunity?

Not really. There has never been a prohibition on governmental entities posting 30.06 signs; they were simply unenforceable. Now it is unlawful to do so.

Chas.

This site has been an enormously educational resource that I have enjoyed over the last three legislative sessions. Thank you, not only for the website, but also for the insight you freely share.

And thank you to all the members here who also share their knowledge, wit and frustration, usually with decorum.

mr1337 wrote:

safety1 wrote:

mr1337 wrote:

FormerTSgt wrote:

Ruark wrote:According to:

http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup ... 10#vote759" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The conference committee report has been filed! Does anybody have any details?

That seems... fast. If they agreed on changes then it now has to pass the Senate and the House, correct? If that's so then the filibuster will kill it. Huffines ruined open carry for Texas. Others share some blame, but most of it can be laid squarely at his feet.

If it's moving this fast, it might not have a chance to get filibustered. Unless someone is determined enough to talk for a day or two. Perhaps that is the plan to get it through. I guess we'll see.

You may be onto something! I don't know what the record is for filibustering, but if we make it 24+ hours I don't see it happening.

Here's your answer:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/po ... .html?_r=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

On May 2, 1977, Mr. Meier rose to speak on the floor of the Senate chamber in Austin at 3:20 p.m. He did not relinquish the floor and sit down until 10:20 a.m. on May 4, some 43 hours later. It remains the longest filibuster by an American politician in a state legislature or in Congress. Then a 36-year-old Democratic state senator, Mr. Meier stood and talked nearly continuously for about as long as it would take to drive from Manhattan to San Francisco without stopping.

The blame belongs on Huffines, not Huffman. After HB910 passed the House with the Dutton amendment, the LEO pressure was tremendous. They were/are putting pressure on the Governor to veto it, if the amendment remained/remains. I personally don't think Gov. Abbott would have vetoed the Bill, but it was and is a possibility. The greater threat was what we ultimately saw happen on the Senate floor when Huffines offered his amendment. After offering his unlicensed-carry amendment, then withdrawing it in the interest of time and the Senate's calendar, he then proceeded to offer the amendment in question. This took up several hours on the Senate floor putting numerous other bills in jeopardy. I have not been told this, but based upon my 35 years of experience, I know pressure was mounting to pull HB910 down until later so that other bills could pass. This is precisely why the Dutton amendment to HB910 was stripped in committee. Huffines was told that his amendment could kill open-carry, but he didn't care. Again, this man has already announced that he's running for Congress and name recognition is what he wants.

You are correct in that, had the bill come out of committee without amendment, then there would have been no conflict. However, it's passage and surviving a veto were by no means a certainty, in light of the massive law enforcement opposition to the Dutton amendment. Some would candidly tell you that it wasn't even a probability. When passing emotionally-charged bills, experienced people do everything they can to lay the groundwork for passage and that requires removing hurdles to the extent you can. Experience and a statesmanlike approach counsels one not to create politically dangerous and/or embarrassing situations for the very people you want to vote for your bill. Experience also teaches you not to set up a bully pulpit for your opposition, especially when a do-nothing amendment is at issue. Huffines admitted on the Senate floor that you don't have to add much to the mix to meet the "reasonable suspicion" standard. He wanted something with his name on it to use in his congressional campaign. As others have mentioned, changing the language from the Dutton amendment was no accident; cut and paste is quite easy. The sad fact is he didn't want the Dutton Amendment restored, he wanted the Huffines Amendment created so he could ride it to Washington.

If HB910 dies, it will be solely on the shoulders of Huffines. Yes, more House Republicans could have voted to concur, but then there's the possibility of a veto. Nothing in politics is a guarantee, so you play the odds and try to stack the deck in your favor. Taking a "damnn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" attitude usually gets your political ship sunk.

Chas.

The "intent" of the language was the same however I'm not sure about the intent of Huffines since it was clearly a deliberate change of language with a well understood impact on the possible path of the bill. By putting this in there, it created tactical options for the House that would not have existed otherwise.

jerry_r60 wrote:

ATX117 wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:The vote to send it to conference committee was overwhelming.... 70 something against to 90 something in favor. It is hard to see how a 20+ vote difference would suddenly swing the other way and vote to pass it in the event that the committee reports the bill back to the floor unchanged. That is a political fiction existing only in the fairyland imaginations of the most fringe OC supporters.

THAT is why the Huffhines amendment was a poison pill. If the Senate had voted to pass the bill as is, without creating a scenario where their final bill conflicted with the House's final bill, HB 910 would have been signed into law yesterday. Instead, and as I understand it, the conference committee now faces these possibilities in order to iron out the differences:

1. The first possibility is that the committee would vote to send the bill back out, unchanged, for an up or down vote in the House. IF THAT HAPPENS, there are only two possible outcomes:
   
   1. Least likely outcome of that: the 20+ vote margin in the House that originally voted against the bill in its current form, change their minds and they vote to pass the bill as is.
   2. Most likely outcome: the 20+ vote margin in the House that originally voted against the bill in its current form, all stand firm on their conviction that the Huffines Amendment makes bad law, and they refuse to pass it......for the same reasons they refused to pass it before.
2. The second possibility is that the conference committee would recommend changes to the bill and refer it back out. If they make changes, the following things have be be resolved before June 1st..........and let me remind all those who kept touting how smart Huffines was, today is May 28th and it is nearly 2pm as I write this..... so for all practical purposes, June 1st is only 3 days away. That means that there are 3 days to get this thing done, IF THE LEGISLATURE TACKLES NO OTHER BUSINESS (and it is not the case that there is no other business to tackle):
   
   • The Bill has to go back to the Senate, where it absolutely WILL be filibustered, killing any hope of passing OC in this session. THANK YOU Senator Huffines, for your unswerving and badly articulated defense of principle, even if it means killing a good bill.
     
     AND
   • The Bill has to go back to the House, were time will run out before they can reconcile ANYTHING with a filibustered Senate. And again.... THANK YOU Senator Huffines for your brand of political genius.

Please God, WHEN are the OCT apologists going to admit that they got taken downtown and spanked by reality? HERE is the reality:

1. HB 910, sans Huffine's meddling, was not a perfect bill, but it was a good bill. Without Huffine's meddling, we would have had OC signed into law today. Period. That is a given fact.
2. There is historical precedence for this. When CHL first passed, it was not perfect either, and it has been amended and tweaked several times over the years to make it better. What examples? Here:
   
   • Amended to add 30.06.
   • Amended to remove penalties for failure to disclose CHL to LEO.
   • Amended to change wording for unintentional failure to conceal.
   • Amended to remove the requirement for the licensee to take a CHL renewal class.
   • Amended to reduce license fees for veterans and LEOs.
   • Amended to add employee parking lot protections.
   • There are more that I won't bother to list here, EXCEPT to say that:
   • It MIGHT have been amended to allow OC this year, if Huffines hadn't opened his pie hole.
   • We MIGHT have gotten Campus Carry passed if OC had not sucked up all the oxygen in the room.
   • We MIGHT have gotten an expanded list of places where we can carry, but OC burned up all the time and political capital.
     
     Etc., etc., etc.

To you guys who think Huffines is a principled genius, it's NOT just that we might not get OC (it doesn't look good), but we also didn't get a lot of other equally important things because, as the debates dragged on and on over OC, either time ran out, or the political capital necessary ran out, before those other things could be accomplished. ON THE OTHER HAND, IF Huffines had not butted in and screwed it all up, we would have at least had OC, even if we didn't get the other things. BUT..... BECAUSE Huffines butted in, the only possibility we have of salvaging anything this session is if those 20+ votes in the House who would not vote to pass the amended bill will change their minds and vote in favor, as is. I like a snowball's chance in hades as better odds.

Thank you for cutting off all of our noses to spite your face.

With all due respect, the bill came from the House with the same amendment from Dutton. The Senate striped it out in committee and Hoffines amended it back in. Personally I place the blame on non-concurrence on the back of the Republicans that voted for the bill in the House then changed their minds when the same bill (for all practical purposes) came back from the Senate. I suspect that pressure from police organizations has made them afraid to support it. Phillips has said that he feels confident that it the HB910 comes back to the House as is that it will pass.

He did not put it back in. If he did, this would not be playing out this way. He put back his version, with some very minor changes. Those minor changes were all it took to invoke a different path for the bill. The changes made it not EXACTLY equal to what came over from the house.

The Annoyed Man wrote:The vote to send it to conference committee was overwhelming.... 70 something against to 90 something in favor. It is hard to see how a 20+ vote difference would suddenly swing the other way and vote to pass it in the event that the committee reports the bill back to the floor unchanged. That is a political fiction existing only in the fairyland imaginations of the most fringe OC supporters.

THAT is why the Huffhines amendment was a poison pill. If the Senate had voted to pass the bill as is, without creating a scenario where their final bill conflicted with the House's final bill, HB 910 would have been signed into law yesterday. Instead, and as I understand it, the conference committee now faces these possibilities in order to iron out the differences:

1. The first possibility is that the committee would vote to send the bill back out, unchanged, for an up or down vote in the House. IF THAT HAPPENS, there are only two possible outcomes:
   
   1. Least likely outcome of that: the 20+ vote margin in the House that originally voted against the bill in its current form, change their minds and they vote to pass the bill as is.
   2. Most likely outcome: the 20+ vote margin in the House that originally voted against the bill in its current form, all stand firm on their conviction that the Huffines Amendment makes bad law, and they refuse to pass it......for the same reasons they refused to pass it before.
2. The second possibility is that the conference committee would recommend changes to the bill and refer it back out. If they make changes, the following things have be be resolved before June 1st..........and let me remind all those who kept touting how smart Huffines was, today is May 28th and it is nearly 2pm as I write this..... so for all practical purposes, June 1st is only 3 days away. That means that there are 3 days to get this thing done, IF THE LEGISLATURE TACKLES NO OTHER BUSINESS (and it is not the case that there is no other business to tackle):
   
   • The Bill has to go back to the Senate, where it absolutely WILL be filibustered, killing any hope of passing OC in this session. THANK YOU Senator Huffines, for your unswerving and badly articulated defense of principle, even if it means killing a good bill.
     
     AND
   • The Bill has to go back to the House, were time will run out before they can reconcile ANYTHING with a filibustered Senate. And again.... THANK YOU Senator Huffines for your brand of political genius.

Please God, WHEN are the OCT apologists going to admit that they got taken downtown and spanked by reality? HERE is the reality:

1. HB 910, sans Huffine's meddling, was not a perfect bill, but it was a good bill. Without Huffine's meddling, we would have had OC signed into law today. Period. That is a given fact.
2. There is historical precedence for this. When CHL first passed, it was not perfect either, and it has been amended and tweaked several times over the years to make it better. What examples? Here:
   
   • Amended to add 30.06.
   • Amended to remove penalties for failure to disclose CHL to LEO.
   • Amended to change wording for unintentional failure to conceal.
   • Amended to remove the requirement for the licensee to take a CHL renewal class.
   • Amended to reduce license fees for veterans and LEOs.
   • Amended to add employee parking lot protections.
   • There are more that I won't bother to list here, EXCEPT to say that:
   • It MIGHT have been amended to allow OC this year, if Huffines hadn't opened his pie hole.
   • We MIGHT have gotten Campus Carry passed if OC had not sucked up all the oxygen in the room.
   • We MIGHT have gotten an expanded list of places where we can carry, but OC burned up all the time and political capital.
     
     Etc., etc., etc.

To you guys who think Huffines is a principled genius, it's NOT just that we might not get OC (it doesn't look good), but we also didn't get a lot of other equally important things because, as the debates dragged on and on over OC, either time ran out, or the political capital necessary ran out, before those other things could be accomplished. ON THE OTHER HAND, IF Huffines had not butted in and screwed it all up, we would have at least had OC, even if we didn't get the other things. BUT..... BECAUSE Huffines butted in, the only possibility we have of salvaging anything this session is if those 20+ votes in the House who would not vote to pass the amended bill will change their minds and vote in favor, as is. I like a snowball's chance in hades as better odds.

Thank you for cutting off all of our noses to spite your face.