SA-TX wrote:
I'm not a lawyer, but strictly speaking, if he has a CHL and as long as he didn't INTENTIONALLY fail to conceal, he's not committing a crime. Your comment seems to point towards negligence and as Charles pointed out in another thread, that's not a part of the law. Given the photo, I'd say his clothing was sufficient to cover his gun under most circumstances so it is likely the he was unaware that his gun was showing. While that might be poor planning, it isn't illegal.
Strictly speaking, he's clearly in violation of 46.02. Does he even have a CHL? Well surely we ought to pull him over and detain him for a while just to find out. I can see he needs a real talking to, ie some serious harassment as a minimum. Once we get him stopped it's probably prudent to draw our weapon on him and put this armed suspect face down on the ground. Did he have a CHL? Well, we better call for a backup unit. He's going to jail. We'll let the judge decide what intentional means. Might as well get him handcuffed and get busy searching his vehicle while we wait. Hope nobody he knows sees him getting treated like a dangerous felon on the side of the road. Of course, we won't hold this cop responsible for this little misunderstanding. All ends well after he spends a few nights in jail, and his expensive lawyer convinces the judge he wasn't doing anything illegal! Oh, and no big hurry giving his gun back, re-instating his CHL, or expunging his record of the arrest. I hope he learned his lesson! Thanks for taking that ride with me!
Accidential exposure can happen and that's why Charles and TSRA were wise to suggest the language that we now have.
Yes, thanks to that language, we don't get convicted of a Class A misdemeanor with suspension of our CHL for five years on top of all of the above. No doubt, that's better than nothing. Silly me for expecting that exercising a fundamental right would be just outright respected by the state of Texas just like in so many other states. If I were the guy in this picture though, I'd be just a tad more confident if 46.02 was repealed just as the voters who amended the constitution in 1876 intended.
As others mentioned, I don't want to turn this into an open carry thread, but having open carry be legal certainly would make this a moot issue.
There's no hiding it. This is an open carry thread. We can talk about it here, or we can go back to the stuffed and cuffed thread where handog recently found out that just printing is being interpreted as intentional failure to conceal in Texas. That, despite all the fine language we have in 46.03 and all the assurances we got last year about how this was such a bogus thing to worry about.
Oh...hold on...that picture wasn't in Round Rock, was it. 
