why so long on getting a CHL?

[Brack77]

Why is Texas so behind the liberal Pacific northwest state ( Washington) when a citizen is trying to get a CHL. In Washington all you do is go to the Sheriff's office pay 60.00 get fingerprinted and they run you criminal history right then. If you show no arrest you walk out with the permit for 5 years. If you do show something you have to provide the paperwork like for the court. Now I live here and I have to take a class 120.00 get fingerprinted pay 60.00 ( or so) and waited 3 months. Can we maybe start to change the law here?

[will381796]

If you paid 120 for a class and they did not include fingerprinting, and then paid $60.00 to get fingerprinted, then you paid TOO much for both. lol

All-inclusive classes average about $100.00 and usually include all notorizations and fingerprinting. Application fee is $140.00 for standard applicants. It's expensive and time consuming, but it's what we have.

TX is also a much more populous state than the far NW states, so background checks can be a bit more involved. And we require both State background checks and FBI background checks. It's the background checks that are the bottle neck for most of the applications.

[seamusTX]

Welcome to the forum, Brack77.

Texas's CHL law is so complicated and expensive for historical reasons.

During Reconstruction, the state was plagued by widespread mob violence and assassinations. The Legislature reacted by banning all carry of handguns, knives, and clubs around 1870. No provision was made for licensing of ordinary citizens.

The only exception was for "travelers," with traveling never being defined. This gave police a loophole to arrest those that they wanted to arrest and give a pass to others. (I'll leave it to your imagination to figure out how these two groups broke down.)

With rising crime rates in the 1960s and 70s, the police began to enforce weapons laws more strictly.

Florida passed the first modern shall-issue concealed weapons license law in 1987. I still remember how controversial it was and how long it took to get it signed by an agreeable governor.

I don't know the details of efforts to get a CHL law enacted in Texas at that time (I didn't live here then). They were unsuccessful until after the Luby's massacre in 1991. The Legislature then passed bills in several sessions, but the Governor vetoed them.

These bills contained requirements to satisfy every interest group that was opposed to concealed carry. That is why Texas has such strict training requirements and stringent background checks, and why we have such a bizarre list of off-limits places such as professional sports, race tracks, and amusement parks.

One of those complications is the requirement for background checks at the county and federal levels. That provides multiple opportunities for rejection of fingerprints or false positives (people with similar names who have criminal records).

The requirement to show the resolution of every arrest also slows down the process. It's ridiculous to have to get the resolution of arrests for minor offenses decades ago, but we are stuck with it for now.

Gov. George W. Bush signed the CHL law in 1995. Since then, each legislative session has chipped away at the restrictions. Unfortunately, a few new restrictions were added, such as making people who owe back taxes and child support ineligible.

I don't know the history of the state of Washington (I've never even been there). I'm guessing that it remained closer to the frontier days, not densely populated, and without the crime problems that are endemic to big cities. Therefore, that state never had the political motivation to restrict weapons.

Arizona and New Mexico are similar.

All I can suggest is to be patient, which everyone in the waiting room has been practicing, support the TSRA, and support candidates who respect your rights.

- Jim