Seated at the table with him are Bill Wilson, owner of Wilson Combat, an Arkansas gunmaker, and his wife, Joyce Wilson, executive director of International Defensive Pistol Association.
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Texas has recently been expanding open carry rights, and a year ago the state legislature legalized the open carry of handguns, already common throughout the United States.
For Cody Harris, who sells guns at Ray’s Sporting Goods in Dallas, the shooting at the demonstration was an extremely isolated incident that should not undermine the argument that people have the right to carry guns openly in public.
Their presence was part of the new legal landscape in Texas, which earlier this year allowed people to openly carry firearms in public.
He talked about confusion and fear among officers Thursday night who tried to separate deadly threats from protesters who carried guns legally.
It was the same nightmare scenario that some law enforcement officials predicted when Texas approved the open-carry proposal.
Dallas police chief David Brown questioned the logic of carrying long firearms at a protest rally. Some even carried gas masks and wore bulletproof vests. They ran when the shots rang out.
“Doesn’t make sense to us”, Brown said. And I support that belief. “And they begin running, and we don’t know if they are a shooter or not”, Brown said.
Police also released a photo of one of the armed men, identified as Mark Hughes, and said he was a suspect.
But in the hours between when Micah Xavier Johnson opened fire on Dallas police officers and his death, Hughes found himself at the center of controversy when the Dallas Police Department circulated a photo of him on social media and referred to him as a “suspect” in the attack. They argue that open carry laws make it more hard for them to weed out the “bad guy”. And as I said before, they have a right to come home, and now they have very little margin of error in terms of making decisions. There are 45 states that allow for some form of open carry, though each has its own restrictions.
During debate over the open-carry issue, some people in Texas law enforcement expressed concerns, fearing that it would lead to panic, especially in active shooter situations.
As of the end of 2015, Texas – which has a population of 27 million – had issued 937,000 licenses to carry handguns, according to the state public security office.
Grisham, who served in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, travels around the state with a trailer in tow.
When asked what kind of City Dallas is and what kind of city it wants to be Rawlings said, “I think we want to be a city for the 21st century, a city that is growing, It’s base is business, that creates jobs for everybody, that closes the economic gap that we have, that closes the education gap that we have, that is strong and safe”.
As he spoke, members of the group nodded their heads.
In a Sunday interview with The New York Times, the mayor stressed that he was not anti-gun, but that he believed open-carry culture had put public safety at risk.
“That’s what this is really about: being able to get comfortable and not become a criminal”, Grisham said. “There were concealed carry everywhere, open carry”, she said. Upshot: The Dallas shooting counts vary depending on if the data includes shootings by non-Dallas officers that happened in Dallas (such as one in Dallas by an officer for a nearby department).
Still, Grisham offers a practical suggestion for preventing alarm: Carry a long gun slung over your back with the muzzle pointed downward and don’t touch it.
Mr Brown did not explicitly call for gun control laws, but said: “I was asked, well, what’s your opinion about guns?”
“You give this gun to this cop” Cory Hughes, who helped organize the protest rally, told MSNBC. “I think it’s wonderful when you think that there is a gunfight going on, and you are supposed to be able to sort who the good guys are and who the bad guys are”. “I’m just curious”, Jakes said, chuckling. A spokesman for the Texas State Rifle Association said in a statement that while the group does not speak for the NRA, “every law-abiding citizen, no matter their race, creed, or sexual preference, has a right to protect themselves”. “But I understand why people are frustrated”.
Several in the audience shouted in agreement. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
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