Statement from Dan Patrick on Campus Carry

[TexasCajun]

I've been thinking about Lt Gov Patrick's recent statements regarding OC. It occurs to me that by saying the senate votes aren't there could be a back-handed way to issue a call to action without directly tying himself to the OCT/OCTC/CATI loons. He says there's no support for OC which causes lots of regular folks take to phoning & emailing their senator, representative, and his office. Then he'll have the public opinion "data" to back bringing at least one of the OC bills into play. But he can do so without aligning with those who are adversely perceived.

Of course, like all things, I could be wrong.

[GeekwithaGun]

I don't understand why they state "We don't have the votes." and never bring it to an actual vote. Why not show us by actually voting on it and then we can know who is really just giving lip service to any issue and who is supporting the issue (whatever issue that might be).

I know one reason is that any rep that votes the opposite of what they campaigned on or stated they supported may not be re-elected - and this is just a sad and pathetic way to represent you and I.

[mojo84]

Why not show us by actually voting on it and then we can know who is really just giving lip service to any issue and who is supporting the issue (whatever issue that might be).

I think you answered your own question. I also think they use the there are too many bills filed to vote on them all. However, I think if there are multiple bills filed on any one issue, at least one of them should make it to the floor for a recorded public vote.

[TexasCajun]

I don't understand why they state "We don't have the votes." and never bring it to an actual vote. Why not show us by actually voting on it and then we can know who is really just giving lip service to any issue and who is supporting the issue (whatever issue that might be).

I know one reason is that any rep that votes the opposite of what they campaigned on or stated they supported may not be re-elected - and this is just a sad and pathetic way to represent you and I.

At least with open carry, a vote for any of the filed bills could be twisted into an alignment with OCT/OCTC/CATI or at least an endorsement of their attitude & tactics.

[KC5AV]

Maybe I missed it, but where did he say that they weren't going to vote on it? I understand he said he doesn't think the votes exist in the Senate to pass it, but that's all he said... again, I may have missed where he added that he doesn't plan to bring it for a vote.

We still have a long legislative session ahead. Let's keep that in perspective.

[suthdj]

Charles, I take it by your comments, you do not perceive the legislators are "tying" all the pro-gun bills to the idiots, just the unlicensed open carry bills

You are absolutely correct. The other pro-gun bills have nothing to do with open-carry and, in my view, most are far more important than open-carry. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, who can carry and where we can carry is far more important than how we can carry.

Chas.

I'm thankful they are able to make the distinction. I say let's get what we can this session and keep fighting for more progress.

But yet they fail to make the distinction between OCTC and the rest of us, so yes lets be grateful for the crumbs our rulers leave us with. Does that sum it up?

From a myopic cynical point of view, yes. However, we are dealing with the situation as it is currently, not what we want it to be.

Are wars won by winning the war or winning battles along the way as part of the overall objective of winning the war?


Do we really want to come across as this lunatic does? http://www.mediaite.com/online/time-to- ... th-lt-gov/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

No, I just want them to stop playing politics and start bringing stuff to the floor for debate and votes. Many of these gun bills been coming up for years lets stop the antics of OCTC etc... By getting a vote I honestly dont care if OC fails. I do care about time wasting games our elected reps play, if it takes more then 140 days to get through the stuff so be it. But get it done. OCT/OCTC/CATi abc whoever they are would not be here if they didn't play games in Austin.

[XinTX]

Session after session a lot of solid pro 2A bills languish in committee. Now the GOP has overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, and holds the Governor and Lt Governor positions. A lot of people went to the polls to make that happen. Now, we expect results. A lot of people see through the gimmicks of bottling bills up in committees via arcane parliamentary rules. I'm sure a lot of the polly-tic-ians in Austin don't want a vote as they would have to go on record. They're perfectly happy with the bills being grounded to a halt in committee. Those that hired them however, are not.

[nightmare69]

If campus carry does pass I'm eager to see how my university is going to react. I may be the only UPD officer to fully support campus carry.

[Cedar Park Dad]

But yet they fail to make the distinction between OCTC and the rest of us, so yes lets be grateful for the crumbs our rulers leave us with. Does that sum it up?

Or we can post like adults and realize our governmental system is a representative democracy with lots of competing interests. Moving the ball forward is a good thing and we should think about ways to help strengthen our interest. Making such posts doesn't help anyone or the discussion in general.

[The Annoyed Man]

I don't understand why they state "We don't have the votes." and never bring it to an actual vote. Why not show us by actually voting on it and then we can know who is really just giving lip service to any issue and who is supporting the issue (whatever issue that might be).

I know one reason is that any rep that votes the opposite of what they campaigned on or stated they supported may not be re-elected - and this is just a sad and pathetic way to represent you and I.

Answer: Long before a bill ever gets through committee and onto the floor for an up or down vote, most senators and/or representatives already have a good idea of two things:

A) whether or not the opposition caucus (in this case, democrats) will support the bill, and

B) what kind of support the bill enjoys within their own caucus (in this case, republicans)

Mind you, the capital doesn't guarantee passage either, it might only get you an opportunity to vote. From those two pieces of information, they know how much political capital will need to be expended to get a bill which enjoys only marginal support out of committee, voted on, actually passed and sent to the governor's desk for signature. If a bill is close to having enough votes before it is referred out for a vote, then it might be worth the expenditure of political capital to push it over the top. If a bill has a snowball's chance in hades of passing, then it isn't worth a plugged nickel of capital......which will mean an individual legislator's support means very little if the support from other legislators just isn't there.

The thing about political capital which a lot of political tyros don't understand is that it is not limitless. It is just like a bank account. And like a bank account from which all the money has been spent and there is no more for other purchases, when political capital is expended on one bill, there is less of it left for that legislator to push through other bills. Also, just like with a bank account, political operators and elected officials who have been around for a long time tend to have more political capital in their accounts at the beginning of the silly season than newly elected politicians or newly minted legislative advocates. One last thing....it is possible to create enough ill-will with your colleagues that you begin your next legislative session in the hole, and you have to expend capital just to get back on an even footing.

So when a politician looks at the political calculus, he or she has to decide whether or not the issue is worth the investment, if the expenditure required will leave them too little capital to spend on getting other, possibly equally important, bills through the process and onto the governor's desk.

At the beginning of the season, unlicensed OC—if properly written (it wasn't)—had some support, but not as much as licensed OC. That meant that getting passage of unlicensed OC (UOC) would require a much bigger capital expenditure than getting licensed OC (LOC) passed. So the deck was already stacked against unlicensed OC.

These are just facts. We don't have to like it, but if you cannot acknowledge facts because you don't like them, then in the 12 stepping world, that is called "denial". Denial plus $2.50 will get you a small coffee at Starbucks, but it sure as hades won't get your favorite piece of legislation passed.

So now, along come the OCT and OCTC hotheads and all their obnoxious behavior and flaming arrows, and some of their arrows start a fire in the "UOC House", and politicians who were lukewarm to the idea come to the conclusion that this is arson of the stupidest kind - an arsonist who burns his own house down around his ears to make a point - and they want nothing to do with it all of a sudden. Whatever support UOC had now plummets to zero.....because nobody in their right political mind wants to expend their political capital on supporting arsonists.

The thing is (as is often the case with arson), in so doing the arsonists also imperiled the building next door too - the "LOC House". So now UOC is dead in the water at the bottom of the hill it got pushed down, and LOC is at the top, teetering on the edge. What happens next defies any other descriptive than "pure insanity": Kory Watkins pulls his stunt in a representative's office. Suddenly, panic buttons are being installed in representatives' offices, and nobody wants to touch any kind of OC with a 10 ft pole.......and the LOC building has started its slide down to the water of political death.

So now picture yourself as a legislator. You've got a "possible" of $100 in political capital. UOC would have cost you $50, leaving $50 for all the other legislation you support combined - including a number of bills that have nothing at all to do with gun rights but which are important to your constituents. After the OCT/OCTC demonstrations, the cost of UOC goes up to $80, leaving you $20 to do your constituents' bidding (keeping in mind that your constituents might not be all that fired up about OC of any kind to begin with). Then Kory Watkins pulls his truly "dumbass of the year" stunt, and now UOC costs you $99, and you have $1 left to get bills passed that are important to your constituents. Would you not be crazy to spend that $99 that way?

What's worse is that before all of this, LOC might have been worth $35, still leaving you enough capital to get other things done; but after the OCT/OCTC demonstrations, that price goes up to $55.......still doable, but much more costly, and leaving you that much less to do other things. Then along comes Krazy Kory, and now the cost of LOC is $80, leaving you $20 for everything else........still theoretically possible, but not really worth it if everything else has to suffer because of it.

So, instead of blowing 99% of his capital on a chance to vote for the dead-in-the-water UOC, or 80% to vote for the still theoretically possible LOC, the smart legislator might turn his attention to things that still have a very favorable chance at passage, such as Campus Carry, or the elimination of no-carry locations, hunter protections, civil penalties for improper posting of 30.06 by municipalities, etc., etc.,............ALL of which are ALSO important to gun owners AND are doable.

THIS IS HOW POLITICS WORKS.........AT ALL LEVELS. It's just a fact. The militant OC crowd refuses to acknowledge the facts. Instead, they substitute Facebook memes and accuse everyone around them of being anti-gun. Honestly, it is like trying to have a conversation with a child who threatens to hold his breath until his face turns blue. My answer? "Fine, go ahead and strangle yourself. Maybe we'll get OC passed in your absence."

I am really tired of the infantile behavior. Don't complain that politicians try to be good stewards of their limited political capital resources, or that they react unfavorably to the monkeyshines of CJ Grisham and Kory Watkins. Complain instead to the idiots in the leadership of the OC movement. Tell them you want them to cool it and listen to the voices of experience. Tell the leaders that they are drowning the message of open carry with their behavior.

This isn't wishful thinking on my part, but it occurs to me that if the car that clipped Kory Watkins a few weeks before he pulled his stunt had killed him instead of just clipping him, there would still be some small mathematical chance for passage of unlicensed OC, and a still fairly good chance for passage of licensed OC. What was Kory Watkins up when he got clipped? He was harassing cops at a DWI checkpoint. Nobody with that kind of reputation is going to get much support for anything in the legislature, because no legislator in his or her right mind wants to be associated with someone who harasses cops during the lawful performance of their duties.

The members of both OCT and OCTC show extraordinarily bad decision making by continuing to endorse the leadership of the kinds of people they are currently led by.

[SewTexas]

TAM, this is wonderfully written!

I might like to borrow it at some point if you don't mind? it's truly the best explanation of political capital I have ever seen.

[baldeagle]

I keep preaching this. Maybe some day it will have an effect.

Every legislative session about 5000 bills are introduced. IF each legislator was to read EVERY bill, they would have to read 35 bills EVERY day. Clearly that's not humanly possible. So what happens? Bills get prioritized. With every bill there is a least one legislator who cares about it (its author.) But he or she has to generate enough interest for the bill to get the attention of other legislators. (There are a handful of must pass bills, such as the budget, that will always pass. although maybe not in a form you would prefer.)

Then they have to calculate what they think the political cost is (see TAM's post.) If the cost is too high, they're not going to support it. If other bills are more important to them, they're not going to support it. Of the 5000 bills introduced, about 750 will become law. (The system is designed to make passing bills very difficult.) When an issue becomes a hot potato (as OC has thanks to the idiots), it's much easier to move on to less contentious bills and let the process kill it. It's not a matter of our rulers deciding for us, as one person in this thread put it. It's a matter of having a very short time to get bills through, a lot of competing issues that demand attention and a bill or bills that can destroy your political career. Before you denigrate political careers, think of your absolute favorite politician. How would like to see him or her defeated because they supported one bill that opened them up to strong enough criticism to lose their next election? Would that make you happy? If a politician is, on balance, doing things that you like, wouldn't you prefer them to be re-elected? Then you have to understand that sometimes they may not be able to do what you'd like on a particular bill, because they're ability to make laws you like would die when they're not re-elected.

[The Annoyed Man]

TAM, this is wonderfully written!

I might like to borrow it at some point if you don't mind? it's truly the best explanation of political capital I have ever seen.

Sure, go ahead.

[txbirddog]

Session after session a lot of solid pro 2A bills languish in committee. Now the GOP has overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, and holds the Governor and Lt Governor positions. A lot of people went to the polls to make that happen. Now, we expect results. A lot of people see through the gimmicks of bottling bills up in committees via arcane parliamentary rules. I'm sure a lot of the polly-tic-ians in Austin don't want a vote as they would have to go on record. They're perfectly happy with the bills being grounded to a halt in committee. Those that hired them however, are not.

wonder if old strauss has anything to do with that?????

[Charles L. Cotton]

. . . so yes lets be grateful for the crumbs our rulers leave us with. Does that sum it up?

Stop now or leave.

Chas.