I agree with Larry. While the clarification in 2007 of the "traveling" law was immensely valuable to Texans, it didn't replace the benefit of having a CHL.
The odds of actually needing to deploy a handgun while sitting in your car are pretty slim. From a personal defense perspective, inside your vehicle you have a ton or more of material around you that's fairly mobile, tougher than your skin, and a lot faster in a straight line than you can be on your feet...and you can stomp the accelerator much quicker than you can access and engage a concealed firearm. The vast majority of the time, pedal-to-the-metal is the best course of action.
There's a separate set of skills needed to utilize a handgun from inside a vehicle that few people consider or train for, issues of getting through the windshield or windows if they're rolled up (which they should be); dealing with shattering safety glass; dealing with the possibility of another passenger while you shoot; posture and firing hand position when aiming driver's side as opposed to passenger side; dealing with the limitations of covering your six.
If your car is so boxed in that you can't move it, then there's a good possibility you don't want to let yourself get caught in the cockpit if the yogurt is about to fly into the fan. The cockpit can quickly become a trap if there's more than one assailant. What you can do outside the car much better than inside it is have full use of hands and feet, maneuver 360, make quick adjustments both horizontally and vertically, and utilize cover and concealment: the vehicle as well as things external to it.
VCAs (Violent Criminal Actors) typically aren't the sharpest tool in the garden, but whatever they're about to do, it's likely they've done it before. And prison makes a great training ground for the very tactics that are used to place law-abiding citizens in mortal danger.
If a VCA has selected you as a target, he's gonna want to see your hands just as much as the LEO would who's pulled you over for speeding. Unless you're perceived as a particularly soft target (think of the recent incident with mother and young son in a convertible pulling up to order at a fast-food restaurant), the VCA--and probably a friend--are going to try to assault you
outside the car while you're paying attention to something else: as you step out of the vehicle with your hand on the door; loading stuff you just bought into the trunk; putting the nozzle into the gas tank or fiddling with the pump's credit card keypad; carrying groceries into the house.
Bottom line is that if you ever truly need your handgun to defend your life or your family, the odds are extremely high that you'll want it on your person rather than in the glove compartment of the car.
And as good a job as the modification to PC §46.02 is, it has some limitations that may remain open to interpretation by the local DA. For example, you'll note that 46.02(2) states that a person (non-CHL) commits an offense by carrying a handgun if the person is not "inside of or directly en route to a motor vehicle that is owned by the person or under the person's control." We've wondered why it didn't read, "directly en route to
or from a motor vehicle that is owned by the person..." but it doesn't. Picky, but you can bet our previous Houston DA, Chuck Rosenthal, would have picked that nit if it came up (he was a notorious opponent of the traveling law in general).
Under PC §46.02, if you have to get gas at 11:00pm Friday at the Stop-and-Rob because that's all that's nearby, your handgun has to stay hidden in the vehicle. If your friend offers to drive his car for a day trip to Galveston, your handgun can't come with you. If you're traveling across state and pull into a motel parking lot at oh-dark-thirty, you can't take your gun with you when you walk into the lobby to register. And--far fetched here, I know, because we're all calm, mature people--if you ever get really upset with the guy almost hitting you in NASCAR-like freeway traffic and you let loose with a certain common hand gesture and get caught, you're guilty of PC §42.01(2), a Class C misdemeanor that is not "a violation of a law or ordinance regulating traffic," making your carrying of a handgun in your car a Class A misdemeanor. (Of course, you can't violate PC §42.01 with or without a CHL, but you get my point.)
And, unless you never get out of your car after you leave the house, you face the constant hassle of transferring the handgun to its hiding place in the vehicle every time you go from your house to the car, and of transferring the gun again from its hiding place to concealment on your person every time you exit the car when you return home...all without ever letting the gun be seen. Leaving the gun in the car at all times presents its own problems, especially guarding against theft. You don't want your handgun in criminal hands.
I didn't mean to run on so long, but after the revision to PC §46.02 went into effect September 2007, I've seen several questions about whether a CHL was still worthwhile. As you can tell, my personal opinion is strongly in favor of having a CHL. It has huge practical as well as convenience benefits: you can keep the handgun on your person (where it'll do the most good) at all times it's legally allowed; you learn more about--and tend to stay more aware of--self-defense and the law; you eliminate the need to constantly shift the gun from your person to car concealment; you get to bypass the NICS check when you buy a gun from an FFL...and hopefully you're more likely to get advanced training that enables you to deploy and use the gun to its maximum potential in the widest possible variety of scenarios where it might be necessary.
Oh: I am not a lawyer, and am not an expert at anything. I just type a lot when I have spare time...
