Two popular bills that would reform antiquated knife laws in Texas are being bottled up by a Democrat legislator. Both bills have bipartisan support, and passed the House unanimously. One bill adds knives to the preemption law for the state, so that localities cannot pass insane knife laws that turn a person carrying a pocket knife into a criminal by walking from one side of a street to another, without any notice. These bills are enforced very selectively to "get" people that the police cannot arrest for other crimes.
One correspondent from Texas, reported a conversation with a San Antonio police officer, about their knife law. From freerepublic.com, Resolute Conservative writes:
Don’t get me started. I asked a San Antonio cop about this when I heard about it, and the response was, “Oh, we just got that passed so we could jack up the gangbangers - but we wouldn’t enforce it against YOU...”
May have been born at night, but it wasn’t LAST night...
The other bill is a removal of the ban on common and highly desired knives that are arms protected by the second amendment. Most will find it bizarre that Texas forbids its citizens to carry Bowie knives, for example. From texasguntalk.com:
Although both HB 905 (knife preemption) and HB 3884 (decriminalization of "illegal knives") passed unanimously in the House, Chairman John Whitmire (D-Houston) is refusing to give them a hearing in the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice.It is time that Texas restores the right to arms that the Republic was born with.
Texas Legislature Online - 84(R) History for HB 905
Texas Legislature Online - 84(R) History for HB 3884
Please call Senator Whitmire's office ( 512-463-0115), and politely ask that these two bipartisan* bills, which passed the House unanimously, receive a committee hearing as soon as possible.
Please also call the office of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick ( 512-463-0001), and voice your displeasure that the chairman of the committee to which he assigned these universally popular bills is refusing to schedule either bill for a hearing.
*HB 905 has three Republican authors and two Democratic authors. HB 3884 has a Democratic author but wide support from both parties. In the House, both bills had unanimous support in committee and on the floor. National publications like Bloomberg magazine and The Christian Science Monitor have pointed to these bills as part of a larger civil rights battle to prevent the type of discriminatory enforcement of vague knife laws that led to the arrest of Freddie Gray in Boston.
©2015 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch
Jim Bowie fought at the Alamo, He invented the Bowie Knife. Any intelligent person would think all Texans would be proud to carry a bowie knife as a part of their heritage.
ReplyDeleteDid you see the latest on the Texas biker shoot out? they first claimed there were 1,000 guns found now the total is down to 318. Now they need to find out how many guns the cops took probably 682. There was a train wreck near Kingman many years ago. an entire car load of smith and Wesson guns were destroyed, they thought. then the FBI investigated and started counting and came up a large number short according to the shipping manifest The FBI got a list of everybody that was at the scene of the train wreck and went to every home and collected all of the missing guns, taken by the local police, sheriffs departments and the firemen.
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