TexasBill wrote:Amendment or no, I can't support SB905. In fact, I am ashamed that Dan Patrick, the conservative Republican senator who represents my district, was one of the authors of this totally unnecessary bill.
The claim, voiced by Sen. Patrick, is that legislators, judges, statewide elected officials and others, like non-commissioned employees of the Department of Public Safety are high-profile targets for assassins. For some reason, the Governor, city mayors, elected municipal and county officials and non-sworn employees of the state's police and county sheriff departments are not. Let's look at the facts: since 1815, exactly 19 people who would qualify under SB905 have been assassinated in the United States. One was in Texas (John Woods, a federal judge, killed by a hitman for a Mexican drug lord in 1979). Ten of those killings occurred in the last 100 years. Likewise, ten happened in the period from 1871, when the Texas Legislature stripped the citizens of Texas of the right to legally carry a handgun at all, until 1995, when George W. Bush signed a limited restoration of those rights under strict state control. That's ten in the
entire country; I'll bet a lot more than ten Texan citizens were murdered in that period who would have been alive had they or another citizen been able to legally carry a handgun. Heck, we lost more than ten at Luby's in 1991!
To put the numbers in another perspective, whooping cough, scarlet fever and malaria are rare in the United States. Yet more Americans died of those diseases in 2007 alone than all federal and state legislators and judges assassinated in the last century.
Here's another kicker:
Not one of these assassinations took place in a location that would be authorized by SB905. Most happened either in the victim's home or at the victim's place of work. The attack on Gabrielle Giffords, in which federal judge John Roll was killed) took place in a supermarket parking lot in the middle of the morning. Under Texas law, not even a CHL would have been required for armed intervention: Texans can carry a concealed handgun in their personal vehicle without a permit.
You can talk about "baby steps" all you want; babies fall down, too, and SB905 is a prime example of this. Unless a potential amendment extends the same expansion of permitted carry to
all CHL holders, SB905 needs to end its days in the House, without passage. This is sheer, naked elitism and self-serving on the part of our elected officials; the so-called justification does not hold water, even under the most cursory examination.
SB905 is scheduled for public hearings on May 17. If you are in Austin, a visit to the State Capitol might be worthwhile. In the meantime, you should contact your Texas State Representative (
http://www.house.state.tx.us/resources/ ... s/#who_rep) and left them know you oppose SB905 as passed by the Senate. Tell them the language needs to be extended to cover all Texans with Concealed Handgun Licenses or the measure needs to be defeated.
