[mooreed]

As a Texan, I am dumbstruck by the often austere nature of the state legislature.

I think the concealed handgun license (CHL) is the backbone of Texas gun-culture. Where someone goes from “regular citizen” to very adept at handing firearms and additionally having an understanding of the laws and regulations for those firearms.

CHL holders are a very real force in Texas. This feels like 2 steps backwards; it even feels like it caricatures the “John Wayne Texas” that so many imagine. Perhaps Texas feels like the “crazy drunken uncle Yosemite Sam” for some states. But hopefully anyone who has been to SXSW or the Super Bowl a few years back, or to Houston for business...hopefully you have seen that beyond the boots and funny accent most of Texas is not that different from other states.

So even though it’s legal, living in urban Dallas, TX - I have never seen a long barrel weapon held by non-law-enforcement in public. This is a very good thing in my personal opinion.

Plenty have brought up the Joe Rogan quote of “people in Texas are nice because you never know who is carrying [a gun]”. In my opinion this observation suffers from “correlation is not causation.”

Texas culture transcends my fear of being shot - which I almost never dwell on. Texas people are fierce practitioners of rugged individualism. With that, comes a bit of “don’t tell me what to do”, and as the belt-buckle of the Bible-belt there is a real culture of Protestantism that permeates more than meets the eye.

TLDR; Texas legislature tries to out Texas the rest of Texas.