SB17 Status and Senate Floor Amendments

[Ian]

I've been following along with the live broadcast of the Texas State Senate and I figured I would give those of you that did not have the opportunity to watch an update.

Current status of SB17: Passed to engrossment as amended. Third and final reading will be on 03/17/15 as well as a possible floor vote on the bill.

These amendments are described to the best of my ability and not guaranteed to be 100% accurate.
I can say though, Amendment 1, 2, and 21 were the only amendments that were adopted today.

Amendment 1 (ADOPTED): Effective date of legislation if passed moved from 09/01/15 to 01/01/16
Amendment 2 (ADOPTED): Required existing handgun permit training to include specific open carry training including retention training
Amendment 3 (WITHDRAWN): Similar to Amendment 5
Amendment 4 (TABLED): Mandating annual background investigations for Texas handgun license holders.
Amendment 5 (TABLED): Mandating retention holster with 1 passive and 2 active retention mechanisms on openly carried firearms.
Amendment 6 (WITHDRAWN): Concerning retention and similar to Amendment 5
Amendment 7 (TABLED): Adding a holstered carry classification to firearms license.
Amendment 8 (TABLED): Preventing a person who has had a Texas handgun permit revoked or denied from using an out of state permit to carry openly in Texas.
Amendment 9 (TABLED): Adding open carry classification to firearms license.
Amendment 10 (TABLED): Requiring handgun licenses to display their handgun permit while open carrying.
Amendment 11 (TABLED): Expand 30.06 sign to include open carry instead of creating 30.07 specifically for open carry.
Amendment 12 (WITHDRAWN): Ban openly carried firearms on college campuses.
Amendment 13 (TABLED): Ban openly carried firearms within the capital building, supreme court, and the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum.
Amendment 14 (TABLED): Ban openly carried firearms within 1,000 ft of a park
Amendment 15 (TABLED): Allow cities to opt IN for open carry
Amendment 16 (TABLED): Allows cities to opt OUT of open carry
Amendment 17 (TABLED): Insures that if a licensed person who is carrying is negligent with maintaining their firearm, they are held liable (paraphrased)
Amendment 18 (REMOVED): Relating to Chapter 42 of the penal code, adding subdivisions 18 and 19. This would close the gunshow loophole, making it a Class A misdemeanor for a vendor at a gun show to sell a gun without first doing a criminal background check.
Amendment 19 (WITHDRAWN): Declare sunset provision to delay this legislation for two years.
Amendment 20 (TABLED): Declare sunset provision to delay this legislation for three years.
Amendment 21 (ADOPTED): Exempt higher education from allowing open carry.
Amendment 22 (TABLED): Exempt city halls from allowing open carry.


One thing to keep in mind on any "tabled" amendments: These are as good as dead amendments as once a bill makes it to the third reading, any amendments will require a 2/3 vote in order to be adopted.

 

[Ian]

Apparently a lot of people on social media are spreading disinformation that open carry has passed the Senate. I even saw on Open Carry Texas' Facebook page they posted this. Pretty disappointing that one of our bigger advocacy groups doesn't understand how the legislative process works.

"Passed to engrossment" does not mean passed. It means they have approved the final version of the bill with amendments to receive a final vote tomorrow. Although it is extremely likely to pass, it has not cleared the Senate yet.

http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/Actions.aspx?LegSess=84R&Bill=SB17

 

[California Right To Carry]

Apparently a lot of people on social media are spreading disinformation that open carry has passed the Senate. I even saw on Open Carry Texas' Facebook page they posted this. Pretty disappointing that one of our bigger advocacy groups doesn't understand how the legislative process works.

"Passed to engrossment" does not mean passed. It means they have approved the final version of the bill with amendments to receive a final vote tomorrow. Although it is extremely likely to pass, it has not cleared the Senate yet.

http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/Actions.aspx?LegSess=84R&Bill=SB17

Being one of those persons who is unfamiliar with the Texas legislative process, I posted the following at my Facebook page.


"Here is the latest. The Texas Senate must vote on the bill a final time before it moves to the Texas House. The bill passed 20-17. All yes votes were Republicans and all no votes were Democrats."
http://www.texastribune.org/2015/03/16/texas-senate-considers-key-gun-bill/

I had also pasted the link you did but I did not admonish my members to take news reports with a grain of salt. That goes without saying.

 

[Ian]

Awesome, just trying to make sure people have accurate information. I've had people literally ask me if they can open carry now since they heard it passed. Although if someone went out open carry without checking for themselves on the law then they probably don't have enough sense to carry a gun in the first place.

 

[Ian]

Took a look at your Facebook page. Just a clarification, there were only three amendments adopted. They are bonded in the original post.

 

[California Right To Carry]

Awesome, just trying to make sure people have accurate information. I've had people literally ask me if they can open carry now since they heard it passed. Although if someone went out open carry without checking for themselves on the law then they probably don't have enough sense to carry a gun in the first place.

I try to give people a pass for not knowing the law. Thirty-five or so years ago I took a number of law classes while in college. Some where required for my eventual MBA, others I took for other reasons. I remember on the first day of one of the courses, An Introduction to Legal Research, the instructor opened up a volume of the California Penal Code and read aloud a section in which abortion was a felony. He asked the class if that meant abortion was a crime? The class agreed that it was to which he responded that we were all wrong (keep in mind that Roe v. Wade was a "recent" decision). He said that the law does not mean what it says, the law means what judges say the law means and that if we weren't willing to argue that two mutually exclusive things, two things which cannot both be true, are true, have always been true and will always be true and then turn around and argue the opposite then we should not become lawyers.

I don't give a pass to those people who know nothing about the law or how the legal system works but who, despite their often willful ignorance, feel free to interject their uneducated opinions as fact.

Those whom I do not forgive are the leadership of the NRA, SAF and other so-called gun rights groups and their lawyers who have taken the position in Federal court that where the US Supreme Court said that Open Carry is the right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States and that concealed carry can be prohibited, SCOTUS meant the exact opposite of what it said. They lost that argument in every single Federal appellate district until they came to the 9th Circuit where they found two judges to accept their Orwellian argument, one of whom said in oral arguments that she doesn't have a concealed carry permit because guns are too complicated.

Worse, these cases have resulted in binding precedents when it comes to evaluating Second Amendment cases. In the Second and Third Federal Circuits, for a law to be facially invalidated it must be unconstitutional in every set of circumstances which, for all intents and purposes, is an impossibility. The Fourth Circuit has decided that it simply won't decide whether there is a right to carry a handgun outside the home but assuming there is, may-issue laws like Maryland are constitutional. These were SAF cases.

Worst of all is the Peruta case in which the Peruta Court held that "insistence upon" exercising the Second Amendment right in a particular manner falls outside the scope of the Second Amendment. A district court judge a few weeks ago shot down the SAF's challenge to California's handgun roster citing Peruta's "insistence upon" language. The Catch-22 is that every lawsuit must "insist" upon some type of relief or it is dismissed for failing to state a claim. Now, thanks to Peruta (should it be upheld), every Second Amendment lawsuit in the 9th Circuit will find itself facing the same Catch-22.

There are many people applauding the Peruta decision, even after they have been informed of the deadly ramifications of the decision should it ever become law. Those are the people who should not be allowed to own guns, vote, drive a car, etc.

 

[Ian]

That's quite the tangent you went off on. While I agree with your point about your law class in that there's a lot of laws and specifics about the law people don't know, it wasn't my main point. I'm not talking about asking a person if something is illegal or not. I'm talking about someone making assumptions based on what they heard on Facebook about what is legal/illegal and then acting on those assumptions without verifying for themselves.

 

[BB62]

I try to give people a pass for not knowing the law. Thirty-five or so years ago I took a number of law classes while in college. Some where required for my eventual MBA, others I took for other reasons. I remember on the first day of one of the courses, An Introduction to Legal Research, the instructor opened up a volume of the California Penal Code and read aloud a section in which abortion was a felony. He asked the class if that meant abortion was a crime? The class agreed that it was to which he responded that we were all wrong (keep in mind that Roe v. Wade was a "recent" decision). He said that the law does not mean what it says, the law means what judges say the law means and that if we weren't willing to argue that two mutually exclusive things, two things which cannot both be true, are true, have always been true and will always be true and then turn around and argue the opposite then we should not become lawyers.

I don't give a pass to those people who know nothing about the law or how the legal system works but who, despite their often willful ignorance, feel free to interject their uneducated opinions as fact.

Those whom I do not forgive are the leadership of the NRA, SAF and other so-called gun rights groups and their lawyers who have taken the position in Federal court that where the US Supreme Court said that Open Carry is the right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States and that concealed carry can be prohibited, SCOTUS meant the exact opposite of what it said. They lost that argument in every single Federal appellate district until they came to the 9th Circuit where they found two judges to accept their Orwellian argument, one of whom said in oral arguments that she doesn't have a concealed carry permit because guns are too complicated.

Worse, these cases have resulted in binding precedents when it comes to evaluating Second Amendment cases. In the Second and Third Federal Circuits, for a law to be facially invalidated it must be unconstitutional in every set of circumstances which, for all intents and purposes, is an impossibility. The Fourth Circuit has decided that it simply won't decide whether there is a right to carry a handgun outside the home but assuming there is, may-issue laws like Maryland are constitutional. These were SAF cases.

Worst of all is the Peruta case in which the Peruta Court held that "insistence upon" exercising the Second Amendment right in a particular manner falls outside the scope of the Second Amendment. A district court judge a few weeks ago shot down the SAF's challenge to California's handgun roster citing Peruta's "insistence upon" language. The Catch-22 is that every lawsuit must "insist" upon some type of relief or it is dismissed for failing to state a claim. Now, thanks to Peruta (should it be upheld), every Second Amendment lawsuit in the 9th Circuit will find itself facing the same Catch-22.

There are many people applauding the Peruta decision, even after they have been informed of the deadly ramifications of the decision should it ever become law. Those are the people who should not be allowed to own guns, vote, drive a car, etc.

View attachment 12418

Okay, what you have to say is interesting, and of course disturbing when you describe the actions of various gun "rights" groups, but I'm left thinking "So??"

What about it, or are you just blowing off steam?

 

[California Right To Carry]

Okay, what you have to say is interesting, and of course disturbing when you describe the actions of various gun "rights" groups, but I'm left thinking "So??"

What about it, or are you just blowing off steam?

Perhaps you wouldn't be thinking "So?" if you knew that the Second and Third circuits got their "no set of circumstances" framework from a now vacated 9th Circuit decision (Nordyke v. King) which was written by the same judge who wrote the Peruta decision. The fact that the 9th Circuit vacated the Nordyke decision doesn't affect the 2nd and 3rd Circuit decisions.

Texas, which is in the Fifth Circuit, is not immune from bad precedents from other circuits. All it takes is for one district court judge to find these decisions from other circuits to be "persuasive" and for the Fifth Circuit to affirm the decision and presto, Texas and the rest of the Fifth Circuit is screwed. The same is true for every other Federal Circuit.

And perhaps you wouldn't be thinking "So?" if you knew that SCOTUS does not grant cert petitions to correct mistakes of law made by the lower courts. SCOTUS only grants cert petitions to resolve splits between the circuits and even then, when there is a circuit split, SCOTUS rarely grants cert.

The NRA, SAF and their affiliated "gun-rights" groups should never have filed these lawsuits challenging what the Heller decision referred to as presumptively lawful regulations. We needed a body of Second Amendment jurisprudence which firmly established in the lower courts the Second Amendment right as defined by Heller before trying to expand the Second Amendment beyond the confines of the Heller decision. Instead, thanks to the so called gun-rights groups, we have a body of bad case law we may very well be stuck with forever.

We are one heart attack or retirement away from losing our majority at SCOTUS. When that majority is gone the Heller decision will become an historical footnote for which you can thank the NRA, SAF and other so called gun-rights groups.

 

[BB62]

Perhaps you wouldn't be thinking "So?" if you knew that the Second and Third circuits got their "no set of circumstances" framework from a now vacated 9th Circuit decision (Nordyke v. King) which was written by the same judge who wrote the Peruta decision. The fact that the 9th Circuit vacated the Nordyke decision doesn't affect the 2nd and 3rd Circuit decisions.

Texas, which is in the Fifth Circuit, is not immune from bad precedents from other circuits. All it takes is for one district court judge to find these decisions from other circuits to be "persuasive" and for the Fifth Circuit to affirm the decision and presto, Texas and the rest of the Fifth Circuit is screwed. The same is true for every other Federal Circuit.

And perhaps you wouldn't be thinking "So?" if you knew that SCOTUS does not grant cert petitions to correct mistakes of law made by the lower courts. SCOTUS only grants cert petitions to resolve splits between the circuits and even then, when there is a circuit split, SCOTUS rarely grants cert.

The NRA, SAF and their affiliated "gun-rights" groups should never have filed these lawsuits challenging what the Heller decision referred to as presumptively lawful regulations. We needed a body of Second Amendment jurisprudence which firmly established in the lower courts the Second Amendment right as defined by Heller before trying to expand the Second Amendment beyond the confines of the Heller decision. Instead, thanks to the so called gun-rights groups, we have a body of bad case law we may very well be stuck with forever.

We are one heart attack or retirement away from losing our majority at SCOTUS. When that majority is gone the Heller decision will become an historical footnote for which you can thank the NRA, SAF and other so called gun-rights groups.

Not to quibble with your obvious disgust/irritation at the state of things, but once again I must say "So??"

What are you trying to communicate? That you're irritated? That people ought to go out and do X, Y, and Z? Just what???

What is your proposal for the state of affairs we/you find ourselves in??

 

[jordanmills]

What was the point of moving the effective date back to January?

 

[Ian]

What was the point of moving the effective date back to January?

When I was watching the live feed, they states some nonsensical reason of DPS requesting "more time to prepare for passage of the bill."

Thankfully, they did not entertain the sunset proposals that would delay it 2-3 years.

 

[rushcreek2]

I was at first a bit taken back by the approval of the January 1, 2016 effective date amendment.

The more I think about it though..the extra 90 days will provide for some subsidence of the adverse attention paid to this matter....providing for what I believe will be a very quiet nonevent commencing on the upcoming New Years Day.