TexasCHLforum.com

gringo pistolero wrote:If people really believe The Democrats can accomplish so much with a 35% minority, they should work to change the make up of the Texas legislature to a 35% Republicans minority so the Republicans can finally get what they want.

There is a big difference between what it takes to BLOCK a bill and what it takes to PASS a bill.

Charles L. Cotton wrote:

Richard_B wrote:

Charles L. Cotton wrote:

Richard_B wrote:

Charles L. Cotton wrote:

TrueFlog wrote:

Charles L. Cotton wrote:

artx wrote:Any updates? There sure seems to be a lot of buzz on open carry....but I know many folks who are 200 times more interested in this process.

Only a small update. I/we gave up on the first Senator and it is now being considered by a Houston area Senator.

Chas.

Has there been any news on this matter? Hopefully the new Senator has been more receptive.

Yes, a 3rd Senator is looking at it and may file soon. If she doesn't do it very soon, it likely won't get the traction necessary to pass. Time isn't up until March 3rd, but that's way too late.

Chas.

History has shown that any bill not prefiled stands a much lesser chance of passage.

That may be the case legislature-wide, but not for our gun bills. I don't know what percentage of our bills are pre-filed, but it's not large. Recent high-profile bills we passed there were not pre-filed include:

SB766 - Range Protection bill - filed 2/17/11
SB378 - "Castle Doctrine" filed 1/31/07
HB1815 - Motorist Protection Act - Filed 2/22/07
SB501 - Prohibiting government use of TPC §30.06 - filed 2/14/03
HB2909 - Established TPC §30.06 (among other things) - filed 3/13/97

Chas.

Charles,

I won't get into a "is too" -- "is not" exchange with you, but it is not a "good thing" when a bill is not prefiled.

Based upon 30 years of doing this, I'll have to disagree with you.

Richard_B wrote:I don't doubt the list of bills you cite as successful efforts despite their not having been profiled, but why weren't they profiled?

Because there's nothing to gain by prefiling and doing so gives your opposition more time to plan. All of the bills I listed were very controversial and prefiling would have been a mistake.

Richard_B wrote:Failure to have a bill prefiled is not a death knell, but the bottom line is that it is worthwhile to have bills profiled.

Again, I disagree. Prefiling does not provide any benefit and it has a downside.

Chas.

I'm with Charles. Prefiling is great if your goal is to garner a lot of public attention for a bill but disadvantageous if your goal is to pass a controversial bill. Despite what my wife's Texas Government textbook claims, prefiling does NOT help a bill receive higher placement on the House calendar. Committees do not hear bills in the order they are received from the Speaker, and Calendars does not schedule bills in the order they are received from committee. Likewise, the Senate (via the two-thirds rule) hears bills in a completely random order. Therefore, as Charles said, prefiling only serves to put your opponents on notice. If you file on the first day of prefiling, your opponents have roughly three months to analyze your bill for weaknesses, formulate arguments, and plan a strategy, before your bill is even assigned to a committee. Then you're looking at perhaps another month before it gets a hearing. So by the time your bill gets a hearing, your opponents have had approximately four months in which to rally supporters and search for an unguarded exhaust port down which they can fire a couple of photon torpedoes.

If I were going to file a controversial bill that opponents didn't know was coming, I'd wait and file it sometime around February 1, after committee assignments had been made but before the committees had started holding hearings.