Posts Tagged ‘Constitutional Carry’

The Long Road To Texas Constitutional Carry

Sunday, June 20th, 2021

Though the 87th legislative regular session was a very mixed bag, among the good bills to actually make it to the end of the sausage factory was constitutional carry, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed that and a host of other Second Amendment bills this week:

Gov. Greg Abbott signed a number of pro-Second Amendment bills that were approved by the state legislature earlier this year at a press conference at the Alamo on Thursday.

“We gathered today at what truly is considered to be the cradle of liberty in the Lone Star State,” said Abbott.

The governor said they were holding the press conference “where men and women put their lives on the line, and they lost their lives, for the ultimate cause of freedom.”

“They fought for freedom. They fought for liberty, and that includes the freedom to be able to carry a weapon.”

Legislation that the governor signed, which will all go into effect on September 1, includes:

  • Senate Bill (SB) 19: prohibits state agencies and political subdivisions from contracting with any business that discriminates against firearm businesses or organizations.
  • SB 20: requires hotels to allow guests to store their firearms in their rooms.
  • SB 550: removes the specific language in state code that handguns must be worn in a “shoulder or belt” holster, allowing individuals to utilize any type of holster.
  • House Bill (HB) 957: exempts Texas-made suppressors from federal regulations surrounding the noise-reducing accessories.
  • HB 1500: removes the governor’s ability in state code to regulate firearms during a disaster declaration.
  • HB 1927: the “constitutional carry” bill that allows nearly all Texans over the age of 21 who can legally possess a handgun to legally carry it in public without a special permit.
  • HB 2622: the “Second Amendment sanctuary” bill that prohibits state and local government entities from enforcing certain types of potential federal firearm regulations that are not included in state code.

“[The Alamo defenders] knew the reason why somebody needed to carry a weapon was far more than just to use it to kill game that they would eat. They knew as much as anybody the necessity of being able to carry a weapon for the purpose of defending yourself against attacks by others,” said Abbott.

The governor pointed to the ongoing border crisis as a reason for Texans needing to be armed to defend themselves “against cartels and gangs and other very dangerous people.”

HB 1927, the Firearm Carry Act of 2021, takes effect September 1, so idiots blaming the Sixth Street shooting on it are talking out their ass.

In an email, Gun Owners of America Texas Director Rachel Malone notes that it took a decade to reach this point:

For me, the journey began ten years ago, in 2011. I became aware of the licensed open carry bill that the Texas Legislature was considering, and I figured that all the politically-involved people would do the work to pass it. How hard could that be? This is Texas, after all.

I was shocked when I heard that the bill had died without even receiving a vote….

When I showed up in 2013 for the legislative session, there were about half a dozen dedicated grassroots Texans who spoke up with me to end the permit requirement. That year, our words seemed to fall on deaf ears.

However, when all the significant gun bills in 2013 died, many more Texans came to the same conclusion that I had in 2011: you shouldn’t take it for granted that someone else will do the work to protect your rights.

During the next several legislative sessions, in 2015, 2017, and 2019, increasing numbers of Texans began showing up when it mattered — not merely at protests or rallies, but actually beginning to do the work inside the Capitol.

It was a long, uphill battle that not only took a lot of work and effort, but one that was ignored or fought by state congressional leadership along the way:

Constitutional carry has been a top priority for the Republican Party of Texas and gun owners across the Lone Star State for a long time.

In fact, constitutional carry was the first “legislative priority” approved by the delegates to the Texas GOP’s convention a decade ago.

Even as the list of party priorities expanded to eight over the years, constitutional carry has remained one of the party’s top goals for the legislature, as 20 other states—including Vermont—enjoy some form of permitless carry.

Despite this fact, however, the bill had not received much traction in the Texas Legislature in recent sessions. In 2019, for example, the bill was sent by then-House Speaker Dennis Bonnen to a committee led by Democrat State Rep. Poncho Nevarez (Eagle Pass), where it was not even given a hearing. Bonnen himself even referred to supporters of the legislation as “fringe gun activists.”

That same year, the legislation was not even filed in the Texas Senate.

So entering the legislative session at the beginning of 2021, the fight to pass the bill looked like an uphill battle. As the session began, numerous bills were filed in the House to remove the permit requirement to carry handguns, while State Sen. Drew Springer (R–Muenster) filed similar legislation in the Senate.

When committee assignments were announced in early February in the Texas House, new hope appeared for passing the bill.

Instead of appointing a Democrat to chair the Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee that has traditionally blocked constitutional carry legislation in the past, House Speaker Dade Phelan appointed Republican State Rep. James White (Hillister).

White, a known supporter of constitutional carry who had previously filed a bill to implement it in a previous session, was joined on the committee by four Republicans who had been endorsed by Gun Owners of America, an organization that has heavily advocated for constitutional carry, including State Reps. Cole Hefner (Mt. Pleasant), Matt Schaefer (Tyler), Jared Patterson (Frisco), and Tony Tinderholt (Arlington).

Ultimately it was Schaefer’s House Bill 1927 that made its way out of the committee and onto the House floor.

On Thursday, April 15, after several hours of debate and attempts by opponents to derail the legislation, the bill passed the House by a vote of 84 in support and 56 in opposition.

While most Democrat efforts to amend the bill were rebuffed, so too were some efforts by Republicans to strengthen the bill. One amendment that would have lowered the age from 21 to 18, for example, was strongly rebuked.

Notably, the lone Republican to vote against the bill was State Rep. Morgan Meyer (R–Dallas), while some Democrats like State Rep. Leo Pacheco (San Antonio) and Terry Canales (Edinburg) joined Republicans in support of the legislation

With the bill having passed its first major hurdle, attention quickly turned to the other chamber.

Just a few days after the bill’s passage in the House, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the issue did not have enough votes to pass the Senate.

Almost instantly, activists began to light up Senators’ phone lines, demanding to know which Republicans were secretly blocking the bill behind the scenes.

Then, the Senate began to act.

First State Sen. Charles Schwertner (R–Georgetown) filed a new bill on the subject that was almost immediately referred to the Senate Administration Committee, chaired by Schwertner himself.

Then, seemingly overnight, Patrick created a new committee called the Senate Special Committee on Constitutional Issues. The only bill referred to the committee? HB 1927, the constitutional carry bill that passed the House the week prior.

Patrick then promised a vote on the issue in the Senate, even if it didn’t have the votes to pass, a move that would be considered highly unusual in the chamber, where normally authors must show they have the votes to pass their bill before it is brought up for consideration.

On May 5, the bill finally passed on an 18-31 party-line vote in the Senate. Due to amendments added in the Senate, the bill was sent to a conference committee, where members from House and Senate work to come to an agreement on which version of the bill will ultimately be sent to the governor.

On May 24, with just a week left in the session, the bill received final approval by both chambers.

Texas is actually fairly late to the game in passing Constitutional Carry:

35 years ago, it was illegal in 16 states (including Texas) for a civilian to carry a concealed weapon. Only Vermont did not require a pistol permit.

Working through the slow process of going state to state to change the law, the revolution happened.

First came the switch from no permit to may permit. That placed the decision on issuing permits in the hands of elected sheriffs, which explains why California and New York have not budged. Democrat sheriffs pocket a lot of money from patrons who want to carry.

Then came shall permit. This put the onus on law enforcement to show why a person should not carry a concealed weapon.

Finally, came freedom. 19 states no longer require the state’s permission to carry a concealed weapon.

What happens next? Well, as with open carry and campus carry, expect the gun grabbing crowd to predict horrific bloodshed from constitutional carry that never materializes, because it hasn’t happened in any other state that passed constitutional carry. Indeed, the three safest states in the union (Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire) are all Constitutional Carry states.

It’s been a long, hard road to get to this point, but it shows that dedicated activists can overcome establishment opposition and inertia to pass pro-freedom laws. And every pro-freedom law passed makes it that much harder for the leviathan state to take away those rights in the future.

There are no lost causes in American history because there are no won causes, and the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Constitutional Carry Passes

Tuesday, May 25th, 2021

Good news! The Texas legislature just sent Constitutional Carry to the Governor’s desk:

After passing different versions of House Bill (HB) 1927, a bill to allow Texans over the age of 21 who can legally possess a handgun to carry it in public without a government-issued permit, both the Texas House and Senate approved a final version of the legislation that will now be sent to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

Abbott said earlier this year that he would sign the bill, known as “constitutional carry.”

“The House was very proud of the version of the bill that we sent over and the Senate was very proud of the amendments that they added,” Rep. Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler), the bill’s author, told The Texan.

“We felt like some of the protections for law-abiding citizens were diminished in the Senate version, and so we fought to get some of that back.”

After the Senate approved the bill with a number of amendments tailored to concerns voiced by law enforcement, the bill returned to the House where Schaefer decided to send the bill to what is known as a “conference committee.”

In the conference committee, five members from each chamber worked out the differences in the two versions to create a compromise known as the conference committee report.

The ultimate version of HB 1927 contained many of the variations of the amendments that were included in the version passed by the Senate rather than what the House first approved.

After being signed into law, Constitutional Carry will go into effect September 1.

The good news is the extension of protection for our constitutional rights, and may create a whole new cohort of legal gun owners in Texas. The bad news is that this might make it even harder to find ammo…

LinkSwarm for April 16, 2021

Friday, April 16th, 2021

Greetings! Welcome to an extra-late Friday LinkSwarm! I had a doctor’s appointment and have been running behind all day. This week: #BlackLivesMatter activists raking off that sweet, sweet graft, mainstream media keeps up its assault on independent thought, and a bunch of Texas news.

  • Hustling the rubes for #BlackLivesMatter Dane-geld must really pay well for “trained Marxist” Patrisse Khan-Cullors, because she just bought herself a $1.4 million home in an exclusive Los Angeles neighborhood where “the vast majority of residents are white.” Evidently disdaining “whiteness” is for .
  • But her buying spree didn’t end there! She bought a total of four high-end homes for $3.2 million in the US alone.
  • Cullors isn’t the only BLM biggie buying houses on the grift. The FBI arrested Toledo, Ohio #BlackLivesMatter activist Sir Maejor Page for allegedly spending “over $200,000 on personal items generated from donations received through BLMGA Facebook page with no identifiable purchase or expenditure for social or racial justice” and is facing “federal wire fraud and money laundering charges for allegedly spending the money on tailored suits, a home in Ohio, and guns.”
  • Biden Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wants a global minimum corporate tax. Since other countries aren’t stupid, I doubt she’ll get it. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Teachers union power, not rate of COVID transmission, determines whether schools are open for instruction.”
  • After an embarrassing hidden camera footage of CNN personal admitting their liberal bias, Twitter permanently bans Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe.
  • Here’s what Twitter doesn’t want you to see:


    

  • And now O’Keefe is suing them for defamation.

    I am suing Twitter for defamation because they said I, James O’Keefe, ‘operated fake accounts.’” O’Keefe wrote in an emailed statement to The Federalist. “This is false, this is defamatory, and they will pay. Section 230 may have protected them before, but it will not protect them from me. The complaint will be filed Monday.”

    The discovery process for that is going to be lit
    

  • Speaking of Twitter being petty, they will “not allow the National Archives to make former President Donald Trump’s past tweets from his @realDonaldTrump account available on the social media platform.”
  • Also, they locked the account of black journalist Jason Whitlock for daring to criticize Cullors for her house-buying spree. Presumably there’s a secret Twitter algorithm setting for “Uppity.”
    

  • Speaking of censorship, the Epoch Times had to suspend printing of its Hong Kong edition after its presses were busted up. For the fourth time.
    

  • “NYT Journalist Erases ENTIRE Twitter After National Pulse Unearths Posts Admitting “Working For The Chinese Communist Party.” That would be one Jonah K. Kessel.
  • Why Iranians are furious at New York Times reporter Farnaz Fassihi.

  • How Biden’s “job plan” would hurt the American economy.
  • College threatens to fire professor unless he takes “mandatory diversity training.” Professor tells them to get stuffed. College blinks.
  • Truth:

  • “Black Lives Matter, So Refund the Police“:

    Public officials across the country are only now discovering the foreseeable consequences of these decisions. City legislatures are realizing that in their attempt to make life better for marginalized groups, they have only contributed to the disproportionate hardships they already face. As it becomes apparent that moves to defund the police have exacerbated criminality, some local authorities are reversing cuts to police budgets passed last year amid much radical breast-beating but without much thought for who would bear the likely consequences.

    Minneapolis is the epicentre of the defund movement—the city in which George Floyd died last May as he was being taken into police custody. In spite of a spike in crime there in 2020, including a 70 percent increase in homicides, the Minneapolis City Council decided in December to redistribute $8 million from the police budget to other violence prevention services. At the time, Mayor Jacob Frey said there were “good reasons to be optimistic about the future in Minneapolis.” The move to reallocate funds away from the police department was proclaimed a “Safety for All” plan by its supporters. Unfortunately, it has made the streets of Minneapolis considerably less safe. In the first three weeks of 2021, Minneapolis saw a 250 percent increase in gunshot wound victims from the same time last year.

  • Since defunding, murders are up 64% in Minneapolis.
  • “Texas Supreme Court Delivers Dallas Salon Owner Shelley Luther a Delayed Victory.” “The remaining five days in jail and $7,000 fine ordered by the district court is now off the table entirely.”
  • “Majority of Voters Say Preventing Fraud in Elections Is More Important Than Making Voting Easier.”
  • China Fighter Jets Will Fly Over Taiwan to Declare Sovereignty.” What could possibly go wrong?
  • “Biden is making the Trump presidency seem like a golden age of unity.”

    Until Biden came along, every single covid-19 relief bill was approved with overwhelming bipartisan support in both houses. Congress passed three covid relief packages in March 2020 with margins of 96-1, 90-8, and 96-0 in the Senate, and with overwhelming bipartisan support in the House. This was followed in April by the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, which passed 388-5 in the House and by unanimous consent in the Senate. Indeed, the votes were so bipartisan that Democrats blocked another covid relief package until after Election Day — because they did not want to let President Donald Trump claim credit for another bipartisan victory before voters went to the polls. But after he lost and they finally allowed another covid bill to come up for a vote in December, it passed both houses of Congress with similar margins.

    Yeah, but bipartisan doesn’t curry favor with the hard left who want massive graft payoffs and total control.

  • Speaking of graft: “Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Uses Call Options To Buy Microsoft Ahead Of Big Govt Contract.”
  • “Former House Speaker John Boehner Falsely Claims Ronald Reagan Was ‘Pro-Abortion.'” He was no Newt Gingrich…
  • The Russian bounty story was always a complete lie. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Texas Republican U.S. Representative Kevin Brady announces his retirement.
  • Former Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst was arrested on Class A Misdemeanor Assault Family Violence charges in Dallas after a scuffle over a laptop. “Hotel management told police officers that the woman was assaulted by Dewhurst. Officers spoke with the woman who said that Dewhurst was boarding a bus when the woman remembered that she had his laptop. It was a shared laptop that they both had access to, the affidavit said.” I wonder if the woman is the same 40-year old “live-in girlfriend” Leslie Caron who allegedly broke two of his ribs last year. Also makes you wonder: 1. Just what was on that laptop, and 2. What Dewhurst, a man with a reported net worth of over $200 million, was doing riding a bus…
  • Yesterday was Everybody Blog About Rebekah Jones Day.
  • Mike Rowe on why raising the minimum wage is a stupid idea:

    I want everybody who works hard and plays fair to prosper. I want everybody to be able to support themselves. But if you just pull the money out of midair you’re going to create other problems, like there is a ladder of success that people climb and some of those jobs that are out there for seven, eight, nine dollars an hour, in my view, they’re simply not intended to be careers.

  • The problem with Austin this time of year is that the air is just filled with pollen:

  • Spotify keeps deleting Joe Rogan podcasts.
  • The line between reality and Titania McGrath grows ever thinner:

  • $251 Billion State Budget Passes Texas Senate, Stays Below Target Spending Line.”
  • SB10, a taxpayer funded lobbying ban, also passed the Texas Senate.
  • Texas House Approves Constitutional Carry, Bill to Be Sent to Senate.”
  • “Nigeria’s Muslim communications minister: “We are all happy whenever unbelievers are being killed.'”
  • The public doesn’t want to read books by corrupt scumbag crackhead adulterous whoremongers? Do tell… (Hat tip: Mollie Hemingway.)
  • Evidently the “new” case against Woody Allen is as shoddy as the old case:

    There is no doubt that part of the goal of Allen v. Farrow was to finish off both Allen’s career and his legacy by presenting a definitive guilty verdict in the court of public opinion. The filmmakers, aided by a mostly uncritical press, have undoubtedly won over a large segment of the public—those who come to this subject for the first time through their HBO subscriptions, or who aren’t inclined to question “survivors.” But for those of us who are familiar with the story, or who take the trouble to check it out, the effect is the opposite. If making the case against Allen requires his cultural prosecutors to weave this kind of intellectually dishonest, emotionally manipulative, selectively edited account of the underlying drama, then the case for acquittal becomes stronger, not weaker.

  • Florida Man floors it.
  • Murica table.
  • “Minneapolis Target Holds Semi-Annual ‘Everything Is Free‘ Sale.”
  • “In Fun, Innovative Science Project, Middle Schooler Makes A Battery Out Of Brian Stelter.
  • Smile:

For some reason, WordPress is now putting random gaps between bullet points in the LinkSwarm, so I’m having to tinker with the look and feel a bit. I may even have to update to a more current version…