Constitutional carry is coming to the state of Texas.
Governor Greg Abbott signed House Bill 1927 into last night, which eliminates the requirement to obtain a license to carry handguns not prohibited by state or federal law. A ceremonial signing of the bill and other gun-related legislation will happen today also.
The law will take effect on September 1st.
Inbox: @GovAbbott heads to Alamo tomorrow for a bill-signing event including #HB1927, permitless carry of handguns #txlege pic.twitter.com/HAc9fFDgAn
— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) June 16, 2021
According to American Military News:
Abbott’s signature comes nearly three weeks after the Texas legislature passed the permitless “Constitutional carry” bill May 27. The state House approved the final measure in an 82-62 vote, and the Senate approved it the same day with a 17-13 vote. The bill was sent to Abbott’s desk the next day.
The law will enable eligible Texas residents – who are over age 21 and not overwise prohibited by state or federal law from possessing a gun – to carry a firearm, either openly or concealed, without needing a permit or training.
Existing state law required eligible residents to submit fingerprints, complete four to six hours of training, pass a written exam, and a shooting proficiency test before being issued a firearms license.
Residents will still be prohibited from carrying handguns while intoxicated, and in schools, polling places, bars, hospitals and nursing homes, sporting events, courts, and in some areas of airports.
As has been argued during every gun control debate since the invention of firearms, proponents are are arguing in favor of self defense, while critics argue that it’ll only enable more carnage. A vast trove of studies supports the former argument.
To summarize a number of studies on the issue:
- The National Crime Victimization Survey is administered twice a year by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and provides the most conservative estimate of SDGU at about 100,000 cases per year. Of note, the survey requires individuals to self-report to the federal government that they used a firearm in self-defense while providing their name and contact information. Most will be hesitant to do so for obvious reasons, so this estimate should be taken as the absolute minimum.
- A 1994 survey conducted by Bill Clinton’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) found that Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes about 500,000 times per year.
- Obama’s CDC conducted a gun control study in 2013, finding that “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million…”
- Criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz published a study back in 1995 in which they found that gun use accounted more for defensive gun use than it did for criminal activity.” A literature review of thirteen studies in their paper provides a range of between 800,000-2.5 million SDGUs. A follow-on study in 1997 argues that that SDGU accounted for more than 80% of all gun use in America.
- CDC survey data from the 1990s that was unpublished but accessed and analyzed in 2018 by Kleck implies roughly 1 million SDGUs per year.
- According to the National Survey of Private Firearms Ownership, there are 1.5 million self-defensive gun uses every year.
- According to a paper by David Kopel, Paul Gallant, and Joanne Eisen, “[F]irearms are used over half a million times a year against home invasion burglars; usually the burglar flees as soon as he finds out that the victim is armed, and no shot is ever fired,” and “Annually, three to six times as many victims successfully defend themselves with handguns as criminals misuse handguns (thus handguns do up to six times more good than harm).”
Just to name a few.
Matt Palumbo is the author of Dumb and Dumber: How Cuomo and de Blasio Ruined New York, Debunk This: Shattering Liberal Lies, and Spygate
