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RoyGBiv wrote: Didn't intend to muddy the waters here with OC.

You didn't; it was an opportunity to explain why TFC opposes a bill that many think it should support. It's important for folks to know the reason.

Chas.

RoyGBiv wrote:

Charles L. Cotton wrote:Letting volunteer emergency personnel carry everywhere a LEO can carry does not serve to promote repealing of those unnecessary restrictions for all CHLs. It also tends to strengthen the concept that the lives of some Texans are more valuable than others.

Chas.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. . . . However, I fret that the argument is not dissimilar from the argument that licensed open carry benefits many fewer people than would unlicensed open carry. I'm absolutely not making that argument, just acknowledging the potential for that argument being made.

Thanks again.

Although you are not making the argument, this subject does provide a focus to explore another issue in dealing with legislation. There is little doubt that HB353 would pass, if it is given a vote in committee and gets to the House and Senate floors. It impacts very few people and those people are highly respected by the community, making passage virtually certain. The only chance of it not passing would be if the "elitist" issue would kill it as it did HB508 last session. Ironically, failure of HB353 to pass for whatever reason could help passage of HB308, so that voluntary emergency personnel would obtain the relief they need and it wouldn't be limited to small counties. (Don't read more into this than is warranted. The added push to pass HB308 would be minimal and not likely to make the difference between success and failure.)

Unlicensed carry would benefit far more people than the current 811,000+ CHLs, however it has very little chance of passing. Strongly supporting an unlicensed open-carry bill and not supporting a yet-to-be-filed bill that will remove the requirement for CHLs to conceal would likely result in no open-carry bill passing. So 811,000+ Texas gun owners would be deprived of a benefit (whether real or perceived) that could otherwise have been achieved. (That 811,000 number will continue to grow as more people get a Texas CHL, so the people denied a benefit will also grow.) Some will argue to support both unlicensed carry and licensed open-carry, but that's not realistic. Yes, we can say we support both and we will, but everyone in Austin knows what that means. Lest someone jumps to OCT's defense and claims this is what they are doing, note that OCT is saying it will oppose licensed open-carry bills. That's markedly different from supporting two different approaches to open-carry. OCT is drawing a line in the sand and saying it's "all or nothing" in spite of the fact that almost one million Texans likely disagree.

So supporting or even not opposing HB353 could result in less reason to remove unnecessary and dangerous limitations on 811,000+ CHLs, while supporting a doomed unlicensed carry bill would go a long way to preserving the status quo, i.e. no open-carry for any Texas gun owners.

Chas.

TPC §30.06: No emergency personnel should be subject to the restrictions of TPC §30.06. If they are called to someone's aid, they should not risk prosecution for answering that call.

Off-Limits Areas: Incremental improvements to gun laws is appropriate and effective in certain situations. For example, requiring notice under TPC §30.06 in order to trigger the statutory prohibition on carrying a handgun in hospitals, nursing homes and churches was a good step, even though we wanted to repeal the Penal Code provisions that rendered those areas off-limits. Adding the 30.06 notice was a positive impact on hundreds of thousands of CHLs and doing so did not make it harder to reach the ultimate goal of repealing those sections of TPC §46.035. The benefit bestowed by requiring notice under TPC §30.06 also worked to the benefit of every single CHL, not a segment of CHLs.

Allowing judges, probation officers, prosecutors, etc. who hold a CHL to carry everywhere a LEO can carry was not justified in my personal opinion. It benefited only a very small number of CHLs and it made it harder to remove those same restrictions for all CHLs, at least marginally so, because it removed the voices of judges, etc. from those crying for reform. This concept lead to the deal-breaking amendment to HB508 last session that doomed that much-needed bill. We already have an elite list, so some Senators felt safe in adding themselves to that list.

Granting special privileges to small groups also places a higher value on those lives. Even if the risk of death is greater for certain people due to their position or occupation, the consequences of being unarmed when one is the victim of a deadly assault are the same. Dead is dead and statistical risk is irrelevant.

We now have almost a 20 year track record proving that CHLs are the most law-abiding segment of Texas citizens. There is no rational argument to keep in place restrictions that were created when concealed-carry was a new and unproved concept in Texas. All CHLs need to be freed from these legislative chains and granting special protections to a very small segment of those CHLs makes it harder to achieve that goal. Letting volunteer emergency personnel carry everywhere a LEO can carry does not serve to promote repealing of those unnecessary restrictions for all CHLs. It also tends to strengthen the concept that the lives of some Texans are more valuable than others.

Chas.