TexasCHLforum.com

Selcouth wrote:I am nuetral in open carry and can see both sides.

If all are allowed to open carry how does LEO identify those that can not legally own a firearm? What's to say gangs do not begin open carrying to "protect" their turf? Furthermore, how are officers supposed to go about questioning those individuals when they legally can't if those individuals aren't being detained? It's almost as if laws would have to be changed allowing officers to ask for ID at any given time. But would law abiding gun owners be okay with this? I think often times we fail to consider the unintended consequences of the things we want or desire to happen.

txnative1951 wrote:

rp_photo wrote:Given the state's otherwise pro-gun climate and the fact that many more anti states allow open carry (at least in theory), it makes no sense at all that Texas forbids it.

I'm sure there are many ongoing discussions about this, so my apologies for any duplication.

Because we are only slowly throwing off the yoke of Yankee Imperialism / Occupation that we were saddled with after the War of Northern Aggression.

The Racist Roots of Gun Control wrote:The former states of the Confederacy, many of which had recognized the right to carry arms openly before the Civil War, developed a very sudden willingness to qualify that right. One especially absurd example, and one that includes strong evidence of the racist intentions behind gun control laws, is Texas.

In Cockrum v. State (1859), the Texas Supreme Court had recognized that there was a right to carry defensive arms, and that this right was protected under both the Second Amendment, and section 13 of the Texas Bill of Rights. The outer limit of the state’s authority (in this case, attempting to discourage the carrying of Bowie knives), was that it could provide an enhanced penalty for manslaughters committed with Bowie knives.[30] Yet, by 1872, the Texas Supreme Court denied that there was any right to carry any weapon for self-defense under either the state or federal constitutions -- and made no attempt to explain or justify why the Cockrum decision was no longer valid.[31]

What caused the dramatic change? The following excerpt from that same decision -- so offensive that no one would dare make such an argument today -- sheds some light on the racism that apparently caused the sudden perspective change:

Texas Supreme Court: [i]English v. State[/i], 35 Tex. 473, 475 (1872) wrote:The law under consideration has been attacked upon the ground that it was contrary to public policy, and deprived the people of the necessary means of self- defense; that it was an innovation upon the customs and habits of the people, to which they would not peaceably submit … We will not say to what extent the early customs and habits of the people of this state should be respected and accommodated, where they may come in conflict with the ideas of intelligent and well-meaning legislators. A portion of our system of laws, as well as our public morality, is derived from a people the most peculiar perhaps of any other in the history and derivation of its own system. Spain, at different periods of the world, was dominated over by the Carthagenians, the Romans, the Vandals, the Snovi, the Allani, the Visigoths, and Arabs; and to this day there are found in the Spanish codes traces of the laws and customs of each of these nations blended together in a system by no means to be compared with the sound philosophy and pure morality of the common law.