TX: Popular Knife Rights bills Bottled up by Democrat

Gun Watch ^ | 22 May, 2015 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

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 it 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.

Texas Legislature Online - 84(R) History for HB 905

Texas Legislature Online - 84(R) History for HB 3884

Please call Senator Whitmire's office ( ), 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 ( ), 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.

It is time that Texas restores the right to arms that the Republic was born with.  

 ©2015 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch

[marktwain]

With the Texas Senate containing 20 Republicans, and only 10 Democrats, why is an important committee chair a Democrat?

[marktwain]

ping

[4rcane]

make gun rights about blacks right to bear arms and we have the democrats falling over themselves in defence of rights

[Blood of Tyrants]

Democrats have been passing laws with the main purpose of arresting people they don’t like for decades dating back to the post Civil War era. Gun laws were initially aimed at disarming blacks but eventually the Rats decided that they didn’t want ANYONE to have guns.

[marktwain]

Exactly correct.

[TexasGunLover]

Open Carry and Campus carry are also at risk...

[marktwain]

Open carry is moving, and will likely pass. There is a move to include campus carry with the open carry bill.

These knife laws are very popular, and the only real opposition to them seems to be this Democrat committee chairman.

But they cannot pass if they are not allowed to come to a vote.