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Texas drew adventurous types who relied on their guns for food and protection and sometimes to settle disputes. Samuel Colt's first large order for the Colt Patterson came from Texas in 1839. Later Texas sent a former Ranger named Samuel H. Walker to Colt's factory to suggest improvements to the Patterson. (By that time Colt himself had nicknamed the Patterson "The Texas gun".) The result was the first six-shooter, the Walker Colt, which changed Indian warfare in Texas. During the Mexican War, Texas Rangers were known as los diablos Tejanos because of their skill with the six-shooter Walker Colt. By 1851 a writer penned the following; “there are probably in Texas about as many revolvers as male adults, and I doubt if there are one hundred in the state of any other make." (referring to the Colt.)

There were so many guns in Texas that the legislature decided something had to be done about it. So they passed a law in 1871 that stated in part, "If any person in this state shall carry on or about his person, saddle, or in his saddle-bags, any pistol … he shall be punished by a fine of not less than twenty-five nor more than one hundred dollars," (about $2,000 today.) It did contain two exemptions; travelers and citizens in a “frontier county … liable to incursions by hostile Indians”.

Two years later the Colt Peacemaker, "the gun that won the west", arrived on the scene.

That is the genesis of the current law which does not allow open carry. (In those days concealed carry was considered something that only bad men would do.) That changed in 1995 when then Governor George Bush signed the first concealed carry law. Now here we are, twenty years later, on the cusp of restoring the rights that were taken away 145 years ago.