TEXAS, USA —
State Lawmakers in the House passed House Bill 1927 or as it’s commonly known as, ”Constitutional Carry.” It would allow mostly anyone over the age of 21 to carry a gun without a license.
"Citizens should have the ability to protect themselves and that’s all “Constitutional Carry” is about," Felisha Bull with Gun Owners of America said.
"It’s allowing law abiding citizens, who already possess a firearm, to carry it on their person without you know, jumping through government hoops to be able to do that. This will help minorities and lower socioeconomic individuals.”
The GOP representative who sponsored the bill said that law abiding citizens need the ability to protect themselves and their families. That as an epidemic of mass shootings have erupted across the country over the past week or so.
"I can not see or even imagine someone caring a gun with no criminal check, no criminal background check," State Senator Juan Chuy Hinojosa said. "In H-E-B, we have families doing their grocery shopping with your kids and people are walking around with big old guns hanging from their sides. I don’t think that something I can support and I don’t think the majority of citizens around our state support open carry.”
A recent poll by the University of Texas at Tyler researchers asked people if our state should allow concealed handguns to be carried without a permit. 58-percent of people said no while 26-percent said yes. The remaining 16% said it depends.
Dr. Joshua Blank is the Research Director of the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin. He is an expert on Texas politics and is in charge of the polling and research there. His group did a similar poll back in 2015 when only a few people supported concealed carry without a permit.
"We actually asked about this back in 2015 during the open carry debate," Dr. Blank said. "Only 10-percent of Texans thought it was a preferable idea to have permit less carry including only 14-percent of Republicans."
It’s expected that sometime this week our state senators will debate the merits of allowing people to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.
"What I think is that the laws that we have on the books are sufficient to protect the rights of gun owners under the Second Amendment," Hinojosa said. "We don’t need concealed carry and allow people to carry guns out in the open.”
Senator Hinojosa tells 3News that he believes the chances of the “Constitutional Carry” bill passing in the Senate are very slim.
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