Texas Tribune pushes attack on Patrick and Open Carry

The Texas Tribune is a left wing publication out of Austin, Texas, so it is not surprising that it takes a disarmist position against open carry.  Still, it is interesting to see how it is done.  All of the state wide office holders involved came out for open carry during the election.  While she did not become an office holder, even the Democrat candidate for governor, Wendy Davis, came out in favor of it.  This helps explain why the left wing media in Texas were not too outspoken against open carry during the election.   Now that the election is over, they can work hard to undermine the promises made during the elections.  From the Texas Tribune analysis:

It’s not just Dan Patrick: Open carry politics have proven troublesome for lots of people, which is pretty weird for what appeared to be a slam-dunk issue. During election season, hardly anyone openly said that it might be a bad idea to let everyone in Texas carry guns all of the time, like the people on Gunsmoke or Bonanza. Or Pulp Fiction.

Notice that the writer, Ross Ramsey, immediately throws up a huge fictional strawman.  He cannot compare the reality, which exists in 44 states, because it works against his desires.   He has to create a strawman, and to do so he uses fictional examples:  Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Pulp Fiction. 

It is hard to motivate people to carry guns all the time.  In even the constitutional carry states, like Vermont and Arizona, less than 10% of the people bother to carry, though there is no legal impediment. 

Heck, even Wendy Davis, the Democratic candidate for governor, said she was for open carry. After the election she said she regretted taking that position, but nobody learned of her second thoughts until after the votes had been counted.

 Yes, even Wendy Davis could see that there were thousands of activists pushing to do away with the antiquated reconstruction era law.  That she recanted immediately after the election shows just how popular she judged it to be.  Texas is one of only six states that bans the open carry of modern handguns in most public places.

And on the opening day of the Legislature, some of the open carry people created obstacles for their issue that their most imaginative opponents could never have produced. They manufactured most of a gun right on site outside the Capitol, which is legal but makes some of the state troopers who guard that building a little apprehensive.

This is a classic manipulation.  The open carriers mentioned did not create the obstacles that are mentioned.  Their disarmist opponents in the media used their actions to create the obstacles.  If the media were friendly to open carry, then the open carry lobbyists would have been lauded as "freedom fighters" and "principled constitutionalists" standing up to the establishment.  But, because the media are hostile to the second amendment, the incident was portrayed as threatening, and is being used by the media to attempt to derail open carry reform.

I believe some sort of open carry reform will happen in Texas this session.  But the writing in the Texas Tribune shows who the strongest opponents of the reform are.  They are the old media.   Why else would a reform to bring Texas in line with 44 other states in the Union be compared to "Pulp Fiction"?

The gun culture has had to fight the old, establishment elites, including the strongest of those, the old media, for its entire existence.  During the last 25 years, they have developed a set of grassroots media, from news letters to blogs to state organizations, that have learned to go around the top-down structure of the old media elites.   I highly recommend the "Rise of the Anti-Media" by Professor Brian Anse Patrick of the University of Toledo if you want to understand this from an academic perspective. 

The old media does not have the clout that they used to have.  Wendy Davis is a prime example of this.   The old media actually believed that she had a chance at winning the governor's race in Texas.  The next few months will let us know if they will be able to stop open carry reform.

 Definition of  disarmist 

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