Mack wrote:The last time I went to the Big Town gun show I unloaded in the car and had my pistol in the holster and tucked. I walked up the to officer, untucked, drew, pulled the slide open and handed it to him. He zipped tied it and I put it back in my holster and tucked my shirt in. Not a word was said about me doing that.
Which is what I did, but I was thinking about it today. 30.06 makes no provision for whether the weapon is loaded or unloaded, zip tied or not zip tied. It simply states that possession of a concealed handgun in the building is prohibited by someone with a CHL.
Open carry of a handgun is only allowed in your home or place of business, neither of which a gun show would be, and it's also been pointed out on this board that nobody can give a person permission to break the law. For example, if I owned a restaurant I couldn't allow customers to open carry in my restaurant, though I could allow my employees to do so.
I realize that nobody at a gun show (or a gun range for that matter) really cares if you're open carrying a handgun (I saw plenty of people doing that this weekend) nor if you have your gun concealed, as long as it's been properly zip tied at the door. However, either way is a technical violation of the law in my opinion and if someone really wanted to, they could make it stick legally, such as Austin which from what I understand is kind of gun show unfriendly. If Austin PD wanted to arrest you for concealing a handgun while in a properly posted gun show, even if zip tied and unloaded, I think that could stick. If you were carrying openly, then I think they could make an intentional failure to conceal charge stick, also.
Of course, I am not a lawyer. Maybe an instructor or someone who's an actual lawyer might chime in.
“I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.” - Frank Lloyd Wright
"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms" - Aristotle
)