After 150 years, Texas brings gunslingers back
Texas may be synonymous with pistol-toting cowboys, but for more than a century the Lone Star State has banned its residents from carrying handguns in plain sight. That restriction is set to end with a new law that will make it legal to carry a pistol in a holster in Texas for the first time since Billy the Kid was making a name for himself in the wild west.
It has long been legal to walk around Texas with a rifle in hand, as long as the manner in which you do so is not ‘‘calculated’’ to alarm others. Since the 1870s, however, Texas has prohibited the open display of handguns, imposing an outright ban that exists in just four other states.
Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, has promised to change that and will sign into law a bill that will permit the ‘‘open carry’’ of handguns. ‘‘It’s a thumbs up for law-abiding citizens,’’ Debbie Riddle, a Republican who represents part of Houston, told Fox News. ‘‘Everywhere there is a denial of Second Amendment rights, crime is through the roof. It’s a deterrent. If someone is going to rob a convenience store and there are other people inside with guns on their hips, they might think twice.’’
C J Grisham, the founder of Open Carry Texas, a group that campaigned for the law, said: ‘‘Criminals aren’t afraid of prison, they’re afraid of getting shot.’’
Members of his organisation made their views felt by holding rallies at which they carried rifles a strategy that even met with rebuke from The National Rifle Association.
‘‘To those who are not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to oneself or one’s cause, it can be downright scary,’’ the NRA said. ‘‘It makes folks who might normally be perfectly openminded about firearms feel uncomfortable and question the motives of pro-gun advocates.’’
Texas is also on course to allow concealed weapons on college campuses for the first time. Opponents have suggested that allowing guns in college settings notorious for hard drinking and raucous lifestyles is a mistake.
‘‘I have concerns about introducing guns in a university environment already fraught with stress and often fragile emotions,’’ said Jose Rodriguez, Democrat state senator from El Paso.
However, a further 10 states are weighing similar moves, with supporters arguing that allowing guns on campus grounds would deter rape.
Michele Fiore, an assemblywoman in Nevada, told The New York Times in February: ‘‘If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them. The sexual assaults that are occurring would go down once these sexual predators get a bullet in their head.’’
The Texas law will allow private colleges to ban guns. Statefunded colleges will be able to establish ‘‘reasonable’’ gun-free zones but not to issue blanket bans on firearms. Andy Pelosi, executive director of the Campaign to Keep Guns off Campus, said he was disheartened by how lawmakers had turned ‘‘a deaf ear to the wishes of higher education officials, faculty, students, parents and campus law enforcement, who together made it crystal clear that they didn’t want guns on college campuses’’. A month after her husband died in a freak treadmill accident, one of America’s top businesswomen has published a candid account of the lessons she has learnt in her grief. In a Facebook post marking the end of shloshim, the 30-day mourning period that is a Jewish tradition, Sheryl Sandberg shared advice received from friends and strangers alike. ‘‘I have lived thirty years in these thirty days,’’ Ms Sandberg, who is Facebook’s chief operating officer, wrote. ‘‘I am thirty years sadder. I feel like I am thirty years wiser.’’
David Goldberg, a highly successful Silicon Valley executive in his own right, died suddenly on May 1 during a family holiday in Mexico. The SurveyMonkey chief executive, who was 47, collapsed while exercising on a hotel treadmill and hit his head. ‘‘I think when tragedy occurs, it presents a choice,’’ wrote Ms Sandberg, 45, author of the bestselling self-help book Lean In. ‘‘You can give in to the void, the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even breathe. Or you can try to find meaning.’’