OK, Wayne (Lapierre), here's your big chance to prove your theory about good guys with guns in a state more heavily and densely populated than NoDak or Wyoming.
I truly hope the restaurants and establishments serving liquor take it upon themselves to ban open carry guns from their respective establishments.
Texas Gears Up for New Open-Carry Handgun Law
Measure makes the state the most populous to allow the practice
Texas Gears Up for New Open-Carry Handgun Law
Updated Dec. 26, 2015 11:56 a.m. ET
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DALLAS—The owners of Gringo’s Mexican Kitchen are old hands at confronting the typical challenges of a burgeoning restaurant business—hiring, competition, even developing a “gluten guide.” But recently the Tex-Mex chain has been facing an unusual dilemma: whether to allow customers to openly display their guns while munching fajitas.
Come Jan. 1, licensed firearms owners in Texas will be able to openly carry a handgun in most places. A law signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year will make Texas the most populous state in the U.S. to allow the practice, known as “open carry.”
Existing Texas law requires licensed gun owners to conceal their handguns so they aren’t in plain view. The new law will allow them to carry handguns openly, in belt or shoulder holsters.
But private businesses and other establishments have the right to ban open carry under the law, and many have been wrestling with how to proceed.
“We’re primarily a family environment in terms of our restaurant. And so we decided it’s probably best not to allow open carry,” said Al Flores, counsel for Gringo’s, which has 14 restaurants, mainly in the Houston area and surrounding counties. “We just felt that knowing our customers, allowing someone to walk in openly carrying a weapon, it would make them feel a little uncomfortable.”
You know...you guys always predicted more violence if you let normal, law abiding gun owners carry their guns....the people who do not commit crimes or use their guns to shoot people....
And every, single, time....you are wrong.....
Texas isn't the first place to do this genius.....they Did it in Virginia...in bars, that serve alcohol...and you nutters said the same freaking things....
And what happened.......violence in bars in Virginia dropped......
Allowing guns into bars has ‘surprising’ result
When Virginia passed a law allowing concealed carry in bars and alcohol-serving restaurants beginning July 1 of last year, opponents of the change decried the dangers of mixing guns and alcohol, for fear violent crimes would escalate.
But one year later, the Richmond Times-Dispatch did a study to see if the gloomy prognostications came true.
According to state police records, not only did gun violence in bars and restaurants not increase under the new law, it decreased by 5.2 percent.
In fact, of the 145 reported crimes with guns that occurred in Virginia bars and restaurants in fiscal 2010-11 (compared to 153 incidents in the year before the new law took effect), only two of the aggravated assault cases were related to concealed-carry permit holders. In one incident, the crime took place at a restaurant that didn’t serve alcohol – thus unrelated to the new law – and in the other, the weapon was neither discharged nor withdrawn from its holster.
“The numbers basically just confirm what we’ve said would happen if the General Assembly changed the law,” Philip Van Cleave, president of the pro-gun Virginia Citizens Defense League, told the Times-Dispatch. “Keep in mind what the other side was saying – that this was going to be a blood bath, that restaurants will be dangerous and people will stop going. But there was nothing to base the fear-mongering on.”
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Allowing guns into bars has ‘surprising’ result