TexasCHLforum.com

Charles,

We should make an effort to arrive at a correct common answer to this:

You wrote: "A NICS-exempt CHL is just that. The holder does not undergo a Brady check when buying a firearm from an FFL. Their name is not stored in a database."

1. Texas DPS maintains a database of every valid CHL, no?

2. How does an FFL know that a CHL shown for a NICS-exempt sale is valid? Because DPS cross references its CHL-list to indictments and convictions and suspends or revokes CHLs based on those legal actions, correct? This means, in theory at least, a person carrying a CHL has a valid one. When you go into a store, merely showing the license is sufficient to close the sale (the lists and checking go on transparently in the background without direct involvement).

3. Federal law, 18 USC 922(s) & (t) specifically allows a NICS-exempt sale for anyone with a valid CHL, hence the system described above.

The reason NICS-exempt sales work is because CHLs are in effect permanently monitored as being non-prohibited possessors. Everyone else has to be checked out each time through NICS to make sure they're not on any of the prohibited possessor lists.

If this is incorrect, please point out where.

As far as possible negative reactions to an open carry law in Texas, I think we're in complete agreement. The 1995-1997 reaction to invisible CHL carry makes the case. Driven by "news" media hysteria, people posted signs and wrung their hands at the idea that decent citizens might be exercising their human rights under the Second Amendment -- and they couldn't even see the firearms that caused the controversy.

In Texas, where open carry is unknown, I'd expect the backlash to OC to be enormous and hopelessly undesirable from the standpoint of protecting RKBA. My point about Arizona is that here, even with a near century of tradition, many common ignorant media-deluded people on the street are horrified by the sight of a sidearm on an average citizen. Yes, many people have come to accept it, and in towns like Prescott upstate it's routine enough that even the California transplants have grown a little accustomed to it. And there is a positive side to it, the inoculation effect I mentioned among others. But I believe in Texas, where it is totally unknown to see civilians at lunch or in banks wearing sidearms, the effect would not do justice to our cause.

That's why I favor, instead of an uphill battle to get OC with all its unwanted baggage, an expansion of Motorist Protection into Freedom To Carry, so you can discreetly step out of your vehicle and take care of your daily business without fear of arrest for an unobtrusively carried firearm. Plus, this Constitutional Carry brings us into compliance with the Constitution and its shall-not-be-infringed clause, a very good thing.

Constitutional Carry has another tremendous asset because, exactly like the Motorist Protection Act, Texans get to exercise the right to keep and bear arms privately without being permanently monitored, and that alone is enough to swing the tide in that direction. The left would like us to forget that we can exercise our rights in private. Government has no legitimate power to "allow" us to carry, or issue permission slips (a carefully chosen phrase to properly denigrate the practice government has adopted). RKBA is a freedom that should be above reproach.

Alan.

Dear Chas.,

Not trying to be inflammatory, but also don't want to be complacent as government massages our "rights" into privileges and permissions. "government-issued permission slip, . . . entry into criminal-database lists, taxes called "fees," . . . expiration dates on your rights!" as you quote me -- I believe these are accurate though perhaps not mild-mannered diplomatic statements of what we endure. It's the whole "shall not be infringed" thing stuck in my craw.

I can certainly agree that in pursuing new laws, depending on who you're dealing with, you'd want to use more sugar and less vitriol, but it makes my blood boil to see an expiration date on our rights, it just does. I know many Texans who rightly feel the same way.

As far as criminal databases, part of the reason CHL/reciprocity/NICS-free retail sales works is that the program meets federal requirements that the validity of a licensee can be checked by authorities from basically any location. Perhaps it would be more accurate to refer to those databases as certified-innocent citizen lists, but I've never heard them referred to that way. Please correct me -- what is the universally accessible CHL database properly called? And it is, if I understand correctly, linked to the "criminal database" (by whatever name), so a person indicted or convicted can be flagged for suspension or revocation, correct?

Please don't take my outspoken tone to diminish the value of my experience-based observations about open carry, or the value of perhaps expanding Motorist Protection into Freedom To Carry in Texas. Next time you're in AZ, let's openly arm ourselves and go to lunch or dinner, and compare experiences. It will be illuminating, no doubt.

Not sure what you refer to with "Texas citizen-carry history from 1995 to 1997"; those first two years of CHL in Texas were new and somewhat confusing but seemed to work fairly well. Texas has not had open carry to any real degree for generations, the Arizona comparison should be germane at least for comparison. What do you envision when Texans can legally strap on a sidearm and walk around town? We haven't even begun to look at how the media will handle it -- and photograph it. It's a can of worms my friend.

Alan.

Dear Purplehood,
I've written books on Arizona, California, Florida, Texas and Virginia, plus two unabridged national guides (Gun Laws of America (federal law) and Supreme Court Gun Cases. Obviously I can't move to every place I write about. Finished the book on Texas back in 1995, when CHL first passed, now in its 7th edition. Sorry if that's somehow not proper, don't know how else to handle it. Alan.

I live in Arizona where we have always had open carry, and it is a mixed blessing.

Before we had concealed carry (1994) open carry was the only option (ever since statehood in 1912), and it is off-putting to say the least in many situations, a deterrent on the right to keep and bear. You must be constantly wary of a snatch attempt. Many people see open carry and find it threatening and intimidating. It stands out in social circles, attracts unwanted attention, removes tactical advantage in a confrontation, makes you more of a target than you might want to be, prohibits carry where being discreet is the norm (back when concealment was not an option).

On the other hand, open carry provides "the inoculation effect," accustomizing people to seeing their fellow citizens bearing arms at the bakery, bank or strolling peacefully around town. It prevents the abuse Texans currently face for a gun merely visible, or "printing" through clothing. We enjoy periodic open-carry lunches, dinners and banquets, with dozens and even hundreds of people openly armed and enjoying meals and camaraderie. Buffet restaurants are particularly nice, because participants get a lot of exposure, and management likes the business we provide. Civil rights groups hold meetings with an invitation that says, "Tasteful open carry appreciated," motivating people to get nicely matching leather and mag carriers.

More important than open carry though, in my opinion, is Constitutional Carry. Texans own guns in any quantity and of any type legally available with virtually no government interference. But possession in public requires a government-issued permission slip, with applications, paperwork, approvals, classes, testing, fingerprints, photographs, entry into criminal-database lists, taxes called "fees," waiting and expiration dates -- expiration dates on your rights! And this is proudly known as "right to carry." So-called "right to carry" got us a long way forward from where we were. But all those requirements and hoops are humiliating from a constitutional perspective.

True Freedom To Carry means you can possess your private property, anywhere you can legally be, without bowing and scraping for permission from the king. In Arizona it's called Constitutional Carry, and we are now the 5th state to have it in some form. Texas beat us to it with the Motorist Protection Act in 2007, but basically only to, from and in vehicles (and a little more). If you step out of your vehicle you must forfeit your rights until you get back in (unless you have an unexpired plastic-coated permission slip, which 97% of Texans do not).

You know motorist carry is working, without classes and the rest of the people controls, despite the old tired dire lamestream-media claims of blood in the streets when it passed. It seems to me a person in Texas should be able to get out of the car, go have a burger and a malted with a gun safely tucked under a shirt, and not be subject to arrest, as we currently are. The freedom that would provide vastly outweighs (and would be far less polarizing) than the also important ability to have a gun visible and not create a firestorm of legal trouble for an innocent individual exercising basic human rights.

Alan Korwin