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Good points and I hope you are correct, I am pessimistic about the next two years in general and feel we will have to be happy just holding the line at federal and state levels, but I still don't expect any big moves on the order of campus carry or open carry (i.e. no con-carry).

The problem is not the number of Dems on the committee, or even that the vice chairmen are anti-gun Dems. The problem is what promises Phelan made to get the Dems to vote for him as Speaker.

Clearly putting Dems in as vice-chairs on important committees was one of the promises, but the Dems didn't sell their votes just to put the title "vice chair" behind somebody's name. The Dems no doubt extracted promises that certain legislation would or would not pass this session. I haven't done a detailed comparison, but a similar situation existed under Bonnen in the last session. The result was a lot of anti-gun measures died in committee, and a some helpful pro-gun bills passed, but nothing big went forward (I think the knife thing was the biggest expansion). It was three yards and a cloud of dust with some first downs, not a long bomb into the end zone.

With the Dems feeling frisky because of China Joe in the White House and having control of both federal houses and major cities in Texas, plus all the noise about "insurrection," I even fear some "common sense" restrictions may get through. I also expect to see "peaceful protesters" from the left wing side invade the capitol during 2A hearings, while any mass show of support for 2A will have the Dems and their newspapers clamoring about "armed insurrectionists."

Anyway, I don't expect any form of constitutional carry to pass, nor any serious rollback of "no-go" areas for licensed carry. I would be happy to be wrong.