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Charles L. Cotton wrote:this session is entirely too short to do anything more than our flagship bills and range protection.

I don't agree with the way we are doing the parking lot bill, and there are some other bills I really would like to see get through (personal interest), but I have to agree that if we get range protection, campus carry, and the parking lot bills through (as written or with little modification), we will have had a very successful session, and more than any reasonable person could ask.

I was just reading the text of the Senate bill and I see some interesting things in it. I do not support the exceptions and want to see the bill killed. I think our best ally in this might just be the DPS troopers themselves.

I was trying to think of why a non-commissioned employee might need to be armed. After all, the boss can just train and commission any of them that could pass a CHL background check anyway. But troopers cost money. They are on a different pay scale and even have a higher pension. So who would he want to give this permission to? Well, it would be people who he is going to assign to some job that is somewhat dangerous. My guess is that this is a job currently performed by troopers. This could include almost any job that does not require arrest authority. The two that immediately came to mind were driver's license inspectors (some people get very angry when denied and there is a danger of kidnap/rape or robbery when they are in someone else's car) and weight and commercial vehicle inspectors. The ones who drive around need to be commissioned but the ones who just sit at the weigh stations and wait around do not need any other authority.

So, I could see the DPS Colonel asking for this so he could put more non-sworn employees in these positions instead of troopers, thus cutting the budget. And I think the troopers association might not like this idea and could help us kill this bill.

KD5NRH wrote:

WildBill wrote:I may be changing my mind about this. Maybe if all of the elected officials start carry guns they may not think it's such bad idea for the "little people". That was some of the rational for LEOSA.

And what, if any, ground have we gained from LEOSA?

There are two areas where you will see some improvement from LEOSA, in my opinion. The first is the most important, and that is the number of individual cops who will now support CHLs. Some did before, obviously, but there are some who took their word seriously and are now working to promote CHLs because of the support the gun community gave them. My big complaint with this is the large organizations like FOP or IACP (not sure of their positions but listed them as examples) are going back on their word and not supporting CHL laws. I will point out that the IACP is still not supporting LEOSA as it should either, so I am not surprised at their claims against CHLs.

The second is that LEOSA is slowly getting widened. This can only help overall. For example, in October they modified LEOSA to remove the requirement for a pension and lowered the time in service requirement to 10 years. As this group proves it is not a harm, I expect to see it lowered even further. Each time it is lowered, it will add to the pool of people carrying guns. This can only help the issue of CHLs. It could even be expanded to interstate CHL (which may be a bad thing, I still oppose LEOSA because of its tenuous claim to interstate commerce).

Having said all that, I will agree that I generally see the laws carving out special exceptions for politicians as a bad thing. My only argument would be to use it to our advantage. I would make sure that the legislators know we do not like their special exceptions and that if it is passed and an expansion to the general CHL populace is not passed by the end of the next legislative session, there will be repercussions. This may give them too much time - an extra election for the representatives is in the way - but it really is the best tactic, IMHO.