I always thought of it as the real wild west of states.
That view is as silly as thinking everyone in New York milks cows for a living.
I'm from New York. I've been in Texas for 16+ years. You know what happens when I tell people I'm from New York? They assume I mean New York City. As it turns out, New York City makes up less than 0.86% of the land area of New York. So it's possible,
just possible, that I don't mean New York City. For some reason, though, people have their dumb-ass perceptions and assumptions, and not only do they keep them, they exercise them. There's a degree of reasonableness to
expecting I'm from New York City, since the population of that metropolitan area represents over 97% of the population of New York. The thing is, assuming Texans ride horses is like assuming New Yorkers milk cows, because the population proportions are pretty similar in that regard.
The cities of Dallas, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio are exactly as metropolitan as any of the major cities in the rest of the country, like Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, or New York City. They're also a good bit larger, more populous, wealthier, and more modern than a lot of the big cities in the rest of the country. Most significantly, however, the majority of the populations of the major cities in Texas
are not from Texas, and I'm not talking about immigrants. Dallas, in particular, is predominantly populated by people from the Northeast, Colorado, and California, who came here because, after Silicon Valley, it's the biggest technology hotspot in the country.
There are people in Texas who ride horses. There are people in every state in the country who ride horses. The proportion of Texans who ride horses approaches zero. I don't think Texas is likely to be particularly unregulated with regard to firearms, ever, since the state is chock-a-block with the panicky, gun-fearing ******** from your (and, originally, my) neck of the woods. If you want unrestrictive firearms laws, look at Washington State, of all places. I'm planning to move there in a little over a year, and I'll be strapping a gun to my hip, in the open, the day I get there.
And seriously. Wild west? What god damn century do you think this is?