An honest answer is I don't know, but there was no open-carry bill filed. Apparently no Rep. or Senator was approached about filing one, as their staff would usually contact TSRA to see if it was "our" bill. We never heard anything. I know there was a new open-carry organization created in Texas to push for legislation, but I guess they didn't have time to get organized and rolling for this session. It takes a lot of work to get such an organization operational.SA-TX wrote:I don't want to spawn a big open carry tactics discussion but only want to know if there is any appetite in the Legislature for open carry or some step towards it. Incrementalism seems to work well.
No, this was one of my concerns that we just couldn't get worked into the agenda this session. Castle Doctrine, Emergency Powers, Motorist Protection Act (car-carry) and employer parking lots (4 totally different bills on parking lots) are the major "projects" this session. There are also lesser known bills like military fees, CHL confidentiality, laser sights for hunting for vision impaired hunters and guns in foster homes that have to be worked. In addition to working on “our� legislation, we have to oppose bad bills. Usually this means working on killing the bills, but sometimes we work to fix select bills, when there is a very good reason. Examples of these are HB2112 (school property) and HB3635 (police stations).SA-TX wrote:Charles, you mentioned awhile back that you'd wanted to try to fix the misuse of your language "a building or part of a building" whereby one court or court office can render an entire building off limits. Is there a bill for this or is there some language in one of the other gun bills to do it?
As discussed in another thread, we always have more on our “To Do List� than can be done, so we prioritize. Obviously, some bills are going to draw more attention and/or opposition, so they take more time to work. The Texas Municipal League (TML) and the Texas Association of Counties (TAC) fought SB501 (limiting the use of TPC §30.06 by governmental agencies) like a Tiger and it was a bloody fight. They will fight just as hard to prevent clarifying the definition of “premises� and “school� so that bill will be a major project and there just wasn’t any time/room left for another major project. (It is one of my pet projects, if you haven’t guessed that already.) Hopefully we’ll be able to tackle it next session.
Chas.