A bill passing is obviously a strong indicator of support, but a bill failing is not necessarily indicative of lack of support. As I explained in my first post, the Texas Legislature is designed to kill bills, and popular bills die every session.
A more accurate indicator of support (or lack thereof) will be the number of legislators who sign on as coauthors in the early weeks of the session. This isn't a perfect indicator--NRA-sponsored bills get a lot of coauthors by default, and fence sitters sometimes pad their NRA ratings by putting their names on doomed bills they actually oppose (particularly near the end of the session)--but it's probably the best indicator we have. You can also look at the number of legislators speaking out publicly on the issue, the number of similar bills filed, and the speed with which the bills work their way through the committee process. If we see several open carry bills, each with a lot (dozens) of coauthors who are more than willing to speak publicly about their support of open carry, I'll have to admit that I was wrong in claiming that the spate of bad publicity significantly eroded support. But that still won't mean the bad publicity didn't doom the bills. Remember, even a minor erosion of support could be enough to kill open carry--if the bad publicity turns off the Speaker (a real possibility), the chair of the House committee to which the bill is assigned, the chair of the House Calendars Committee, the lieutenant governor (unlikely), the chair of the Senate committee to which the bill is assigned, the governor (unlikely), or just eleven Senators (there will most likely be twelve Democrats), the bill is unlikely to pass. People without experience in these matters tend to focus on getting more than 50% support in both chambers (at least 76 votes in the House and at least 16 votes in the Senate), but that's actually a very small part of it. Even a bill with 60% support in both chambers is far from a sure thing.
I've spoken with representatives of four or five gun-rights organizations who are worried that the bad publicity is going to damage not only open carry legislation but ALL gun-rights legislation. These groups range in size/stature from large and well-funded to small and volunteer-based. These are experienced, engaged gun-rights lobbyists/activists who, unlike most of the people inside the open carry echo chamber, actually know where the restrooms are located in the Capitol. They not only understand the legislative process; they understand public relations. Unlike the open carry activists who keep blaming media bias for the glut of bad publicity, they understand that media bias and media incompetence are an ever-present part of the equation. A media savvy organization plans for media bias and incompetence at every step of the way. A media savvy organization doesn't complain that the media didn't accurately report the group's motivation for visiting a fast food restaurant with rifles slung at the low ready; a media savvy organization recognizes up-front that such actions could be misconstrued and steers clear of those types of questionable tactics. These lobbyists/activists understand that a group's public image is the only image most legislators care about when it comes time to support or oppose the group's bill. Legislators aren't going to cut a group slack because its members meant well. If supporting the group is going to cost a legislator votes on election day, he or she is going to find a way to, at the very least, avoid dealing with the group's issue (this is where the dreaded Calendars Committee comes into play--a lot of legislators rely on their friends on the Calendars Committee to help them avoid voting on bills they'd rather not support or oppose).
If open carry activists want legislators to take them seriously and want established gun-rights groups to quit treating them as pariahs, they need to stop making dumb PR moves and quit finding ways to publicly demonstrate their ignorance and naivety. Seeking out controversy is NOT the way to get legislators to align themselves with your cause (an armed march through Houston's Fifth Ward would neither win over fence sitters nor discredit opponents; it would be a meaningless publicity stunt). Allowing members to pursue/confront opponents is NOT the way to get legislators to align themselves with your cause (when I was in a leadership position with a gun-rights group, a supporter who followed an opponent to his/her car or posted an opponent's contact information online would have been barred from future participation with our group; if the story had gone public, we would have immediately put out a press release denouncing the supporter's actions and explaining what steps had been taken to prevent a repeat occurrence). Asking members to demand that their legislators support legislation that is objectively unpassable is NOT the way to get legislators to align themselves with your cause (nothing screams, "Amateurs!" like promoting legislation that reads as if it were written by someone who has never even read, much less written, a filed bill). These aren't arbitrary rules just waiting to be broken by a group of rebels; these are laws of nature that are only denied by lunatics. Right now, it's as if a certain faction of the open carry movement has decided that gravity doesn't apply to them.
There's a lot of opinion here, which you are
certainly entitled to, and I'm sure much of your post is completely accurate, but you still seem to have a hard time refraining from unfounded accusations and the positioning of your personal opinion as fact. You could have made a perfectly reasonable post had you not once again succumbed to your elitist, "I'm more experienced, I know more about this topic than you, so I can assert my personal opinions as fact" attitude. What, specifically, am I referring to?
First of all, you're generalizing group orientations too broadly. In most cases this might not make a difference, but since you're using this to criticize certain groups then accuracy becomes more important. Your distinctions between "gun rights groups" and "open carry groups" are not accurate. Any gun rights group should be pro-open carry and any open carry group should naturally be considered a gun rights group. If the groups you speak of do not support passing open carry, then their classification as gun rights groups must be called into question. I am speaking specifically of the TSRA and the NRA.
You say we're appearing as amateurs for posting this bill online for others to read, because it isn't well-written enough. Perhaps if you were a gun rights activist and you had near the experience and knowledge you assert, you'd simply offer suggestions on improving the bill instead of offering the most nonconstructive criticisms you can find.
You assert that gun rights groups that are advocating for open carry seek out controversy. That is false. You assert that an event at 5th ward is nothing but a publicity stunt, from which no benefit could possibly arise. That is false. What benefit could arise? Hell man, if you only took the time to read anything about the organization you're criticizing or anything about their plans for the event then you would already know. The less fortunate can be helped through donations, which is planned. The people in 5th ward can be given an opportunity to break the ice on exercising their rights to equip themselves for self-defense, given an opportunity to assert their rights in the face of being discouraged by others from doing so. The people can be shown how to properly equip themselves, they can be shown gun safety and respect, they can be encouraged to do all of these things. That must be where the confusion lies, you see none of these benefits are direct toward OCT, these benefits are direct toward the community. OCT does not exist just to benefit OCT. Perhaps that is what actually sets them apart from your long-time organizations that have managed to position themselves. "Allowing members to pursue/confront opponents" I'm not aware of any gun rights organization in Texas allowing this, as you say. I'm sure it's happened, and I'm sure it was addressed and you simply didn't bother to follow up and find out. Moreover, with this statement, since I believe I know which video you're referring to, it is even more obvious your desire to use minor inaccuracies to criticize these groups in as nonconstructive a manner as possible. You want to take all of these gun rights organizations that you don't like, lump them into their own categorization, then cumulate every fault you can find with any of them and apply those criticisms to the entire categorization while being as discouraging as possible. You assert that we complain about media bias - no, not really. We criticize those that are ignorant enough to accept an inaccurate media report. You assert that we visit fast food restaurants with rifles slung at low ready, this is a contradiction, it's either slung or at low ready, and we've not visited fast food restaurants with rifles at low ready, though only minor criticism would be justified even if that were the case. This is now tiresome. Let's move to closing.
In closing, I would just like to say that I'm sorry you've been unable to piggy-back knife rights onto the open-carry movement, but I don't think that justifies your lashing out. Have a nice day, open carry opponents.
