Hold up there a minute........ It has always been my understanding that the law requires you to show your CHL and TDL if you are armed, and that there is no requirement to show the CHL if you are not armed; and that most people, myself included, show both whether or not we are armed simply out of courtesy to the officer. And of course, the penalty has since been removed for failing to show the officer your CHL when it is required. The requirement is still there, but the penalty for failing to do so is gone.dicion wrote:Note, not under it's AUTHORITY, simply that you are carrying both on your person. That is an important difference. It's the same verbiage that requires you to show your CHL to an officer, even if you're not carrying under it's authority.
Texas GC 411.205 (http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/D ... GV.411.htm):
Ergo, when you are NOT carrying a handgun "on or about your person" when a magistrate or peace officer demands your ID, you are NOT required to display your CHL. Only your TDL (or other state issued ID) is required. That said, the officer in question is going to more than likely find out you have a CHL, and then have his or her panties in a wad because you didn't tell them—because they naturally assume that a CHL would be armed. Then you have to go through the whole song and dance of trying to explain the law to the officer.......who is most likely not going to be receptive because he or she is going to default to the notion that a cop knows more about the law than a citizen.........and most of the time, they would be correct. Just not this time.Sec. 411.205. REQUIREMENT TO DISPLAY LICENSE. If a license holder is carrying a handgun on or about the license holder's person when a magistrate or a peace officer demands that the license holder display identification, the license holder shall display both the license holder's driver's license or identification certificate issued by the department and the license holder's handgun license.
So while there is no legal requirement to display your CHL when you are not armed, wisdom and discernment would seem to dictate that you ought to, just to forestall any unpleasantness.
So given the above statute, how do you arrive at a requirement to display both IDs if you're not carrying a handgun under authority of your CHL, but rather under the authority of MPA or some other legal device? In the statutes, I mean.