Proponents of Texas’ new law allowing most people to carry handguns in public without a permit or training say it will help people defend themselves without government interference. Research suggests crime actually rises after such laws are implemented.
Angelica Halphen, whose 18-year-old son Harrison Schmidt was killed in a 2019 road rage shooting in Houston, Texas holds photos of her son in Houston, Wednesday Sept. 1, 2021. Texas' new law allowing most people to carry handguns in public without a license or training came in part from the belief by many here that the best way to prevent crime and stop an armed bad guy is to make sure an armed good guy is nearby.
Gov. Greg Abbott and his Republican allies in the Legislature who this summer made Texas the largest state with a so-calledpitched it as a way to let people more easily defend themselves without government interference. Although several of the permitless carry states passed their laws this year and researchers say more time is needed to fully study the impact of such measures, Sven Smith, an assistant sociology professor at Stetson University in Florida who studies gun violence, said the data collected so far in various studies suggest that crime rates in states with open carry laws go up 10% to 15%.
In recent months, the Houston area has seen a rash of confrontations in which people sought to settle seemingly petty disputes with a gun, though the problem is by no means unique to the nation’s fourth-largest city. In one case, a man was threatened with a handgun after he honked at a car in front of him at a fast food drive-thru. In another, someone opened fire at a nail salon over a disagreement about the price of a manicure and pedicure.
“Guns are for defense. They are really to protect people’s lives, not to settle disputes, and that’s what I fear happening,” said Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, the top prosecutor in Houston. “I just think more guns — more access — necessarily means more shootings and more killings. That’s bad for Houston. That’s bad for Texas.”
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