Texas lawmakers poised to allow the open carrying of handguns

Texas lawmakers are on the brink of passing “open carry” gun legislation that critics say will put the public at risk.

The Texas House voted 96-35 to provisionally approve the bill in Austin on Friday night. It will allow firearms owners in Texas who have concealed handgun permits –some 850,000 people – to openly carry their weapons in public in a hip or shoulder holster.

The scheme had been expected to pass earlier in the week but Democrats managed to stall it on a technicality and unsuccessfully tried to dilute it by giving large cities the right to introduce get-out ordinances. They also wanted to make it easier for private businesses to display signs prohibiting weapons on the premises.

One amendment relating to signs did pass: reducing the penalty for accidentally carrying a weapon into such a business from a class A to a class C misdemeanour.
Since there are local bans in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, the plan would make Dallas and Houston the largest metropolitan areas in the US which allow open carry, the Texas Tribune reported.

“As a gun-owning Texas mom, I am ashamed of our Texas lawmakers who voted in favour of extremist interests and petty politics instead of representing the majority of Texans who oppose the open carry of handguns,” Angela Turner of the Texas chapter of Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America said in a statement.

“Even more concerning is our lawmakers passed HB910 [the act] without the signage amendment, making a mockery of our private property rights and now our businesses will be forced to post two large and burdensome signs to keep concealed handgun license holders from carrying openly onto their premises.”

Texas law calls for signs prohibiting guns inside a business to be conspicuous and have specific language in English and Spanish in letters at least one inch tall, which means they take up a substantial proportion of small shopfronts.

Once it receives final approval from legislators and is consolidated with a similar bill that has already passed the Texas senate, the plan will require a sign-off from governor Greg Abbott, which is likely to be a formality. The Republican, who succeeded Rick Perry in January, has previously said he will approve any legislation that expands gun rights.

Texas politicians in the Republican-dominated legislature had pledged to expand gun rights during last year’s GOP primaries, in which candidates habitually try to woo voters with strongly conservative rhetoric.

Senior police officers testified against the proposal during committee hearings earlier this year, fearful that it would force departments to provide increased training and resources. They also argued it would be dangerous as well as expensive, since officers might have problems distinguishing criminals from innocent people in chaotic active-shooter situations.

“Right now, I’m doing good to send two deputies to a very dangerous situation,” Adrian Garcia, sheriff for Harris County, which covers Houston, said in February, according to the Texas Tribune. “Now when we get a call, shots fired or disturbance with guns involved, we typically think one person is creating chaos. Now we may have many people.”

Alice Tripp, a lobbyist with the NRA-affiliated Texas State Rifle Association, said in March that law-abiding license holders should not be subject to the burden of having to keep their weapons hidden.

“It’s time to let them take off their coats to pump their gas in August,” she said.

Despite its Wild West, gun-toting reputation, Texas is one of only six states, including Florida, New York, Illinois and California, that prohibit the open carrying of handguns in public. The ban dates back to the 1800s.

Long guns such as rifles are allowed to be displayed in public, which has led to rallies by pro-gun groups in places such as restaurants that even the NRA, before retracting their statement, called “dubious” and “downright weird”.

A bill to permit the carrying of concealed guns on higher education campuses – known as SB11 – is pending. The proposal has been criticised as a potential threat to safety by the chancellor of the University of Texas System, William McRaven, the former navy admiral who led the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, as well as Colin Goddard, a survivor of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.

He told a hearing: “There is no evidence that a bill like SB11 would do anything to stop a mass shooting, but SB11 would make the average day on campus more dangerous in an environment where students are dealing with failing grades, alcohol abuse, relationship problems.”

The new legislation does not go far enough for some groups, including Open Carry Tarrant County, which has aggressively called for the right to carry firearms without a license.

In January, members of the group harassed a Democratic state representative, Poncho Nevarez, with a pro-gun protest in his office that led to panic buttons being installed in the Texas capitol and a security detail being assigned to him.

“The vitriol, the anger, and the hate that surrounds this issue is outside the walls of this chamber and we’re not contemplating it because we live in this fantasy world where we’re trying to protect Second Amendment rights at all costs,” he said on Friday.