by Texas officially became the 20th 21st state to enact permitless or constitutional carry yesterday. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) kept his promise and signed HB 1927 into law. It becomes effective on September 1st. The bill allows anyone who is age 21 and over who can legally possess a firearm to carry, openly or concealed, a handgun so long as it is a non-prohibited public place. There is an exception made for those convicted of certain misdemeanors within the past five years. They are only allowed to carry in their homes or vehicles.
GOA Texas has an excellent summary of the exceptions, the prohibited places, and what the bill contains.
With Texas becoming the 20th 21st state to allow permitless carry, there are almost as many states allowing permitless carry as there are with shall-issue carry. The addition of Texas jumps the percentage of the US population living in a permitless state from 17.6% to 26.4%. As Rob Vance who has created the graph below notes, “This is what a preference cascade looks like.”
When Rob Vance and I started this series almost ten years ago, Illinois still had not enacted shall-issue carry. I commented that in 2011, shall-issue carry was the new norm. In 2021, we are almost to the tipping point where permitless carry will be the new norm. If large shall-issue states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, or North Carolina were to adopt permitless carry, then we would have tipped.
We are still waiting on Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA) to either sign or veto Louisiana’s SB 118 allowing permitless carry. He has said he will veto it but the legislation passed with a super-majority meaning his veto would probably be overridden. Since the bill passed within the last 10 days of the legislative session, Edwards has until approximately June 24th to veto it or it becomes law without his signature.
The usual suspects are crying that blood will now run in the streets of Texas. The Demanding Moms plan to picket the Governor’s Mansion and other places to attract attention from their compliant media allies. Progress Texas is condemning it claiming a majority of Texans didn’t approve of it. As we have seen time after time, despite the hyperbole, nothing of the claimed actions does actually happen.
Hi John, Please note that violent crime is spiking now as many of our governors and mayors abandon the pretense of keeping public order (see Minneapolis and Portland [and Chicago as always] as specific examples). The media and its political masters will attempt to confuse cause and effect for their own malicious purposes. Also please note one statistical fact – as more states adopt Constitutional Carry their combined crime statistics will in fact regress toward the mean. What we aim for, beyond the fundamental principle of obeying our highest laws is to bring those rates down with citizens who can legally defend themselves using their own tools and methods, rather than relying on government.
Sure wish the SCOTUS would address the yellow issue as effectively as they addressed the red issue circa 2014. Still ridiculous that there are states that allow a (relatively) randomly chosen individual to just decide that you don’t get a permit because they don’t want to give it to you.