Open Carry In Texas

Well, it has finally happened. A grassroots organization is pressing for legislative action to address the requirement for licensed Texans to carry their weapons concealed. The over ten year old law allows Texans to carry their weapons only with a license and only concealed. The problem comes with the “concealment”. If the weapon so much as prints against your clothes, and someone sees it, you may be charged with a misdemeanor (GC §411.171(2) and PC §46.02); it would be argued that you “recklessly” carried your weapon in plain view.

There are currently six states in the Union that ban the open carry of a firearm. OpenCarry.org is pushing to lower that number to five. Forty-four states in the Union allow—to one degree or another—their citizens to carry their weapon in the open. I’m not a mathematician, but that means that 88% of this country has some form of open carry option; that’s a fairly sizable margin!

So why is this such a big issue? Aside from the obvious Second Amendment issues, for us CHL holders who are “vertically challenged,” it has the immediate benefit of ease of carry. For example, I’m 5′9″ and weigh in at about 145 pounds. When the Texas sun reaches its zenith in July and August, it gets very difficult to conceal the firearm in shorts and a t-shirt. This means I can either: sweat my head off and carry the gun I prefer; buy a J-Frame for my pocket and carry less firepower; or not carry at all. None of these are particularly good options. Having the option to open carry means I throw on my favorite t-shirt, shorts, belt, and holster and I’m off.

Deterrent

The above is a fairly simplistic reason. The broader, and more affective reason is that the firearm carried in the open acts as a deterrent to the unibrowed thug wanting to do nothing but harm. It is the same reason the United States sends her Navy’s aircraft carriers to places like the Red Sea. It lets the other nations know that we are willing and ready to flex our muscle if it should be required. The firearm on the hip, open to the public’s view, says the same thing; when the chips are down, we will be ready, so take your criminal mischief elsewhere.

Most naysayers would suggest that the open carry actor will be the first one shot at the scene of a crime. I have yet to find evidence that this is based in fact. In an April 1996 Federal Bureau of Investigation report entitled “Above and Beyond the Call of Duty: Preventing Off-duty Officer Deaths,” the authors cited the FBI’s 1993 edition of the annual “Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted” (LEOKA) publication. LEOKA reports that between 1991 and 1993 only 35 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed while off-duty. Only one of those occurred during a burglary in progress.

During an interview with a cop-killer who murdered an off-duty policeman while committing a robbery at a restaurant, the murderer said:

…he [perpetrator] had entered the bar before his partners to avoid being seen with them. The plan called for him to walk away during the confusion, after the other two had made their escape. Although they had anticipated resistance from the restaurant management, they had not expected the presence of an off-duty officer. The assailant stated that he did not hear the officer shout “Police,” but admitted that it would not have made a difference. He had entered the bar prepared to shoot, and when he observed a man with a gun, he shot him.

The killer also advised that even if the officer had waited for his partners to get the money and start to leave before making an effort to arrest them, he still would have shot him. The shooter believed that the only thing the officer could have done to avoid physical injury would have been to remain seated, observe, and not take action. In fact, he said, the trio had no intentions of robbing the customers of the restaurant.

“See?! Open carry doesn’t help!” would be the battle cry. Small problem. The officer wasn’t specifically targeted for carrying his piece in the open. In fact, according to the story, it appears that this off-duty officer was carrying concealed at this restaurant and was only murdered after confronting two of the three felons. So how does this help the argument? Quite simply, there is no conclusive evidence that would show that open carry makes you a direct target of a felonious assault. Simply getting involved could make you a target.