Independent Program Attorney Emily Taylor addresses the legal issue of whether you can legally open carry your firearm at a demonstration in Texas—and why such an action can get you unwanted police attention.
Sam: Welcome to U.S. LawShield and Texas LawShield’s Live Report on Facebook Live. From the news desk in Houston, I am Sam Malone.
Let me get to Independent Program Attorney Emily Taylor, a woman who can break the internet as a lawyer. How are you Emily? What’s going on?
Emily: I’m great, how are you?
Sam: Fan-tastic. After the violence that took place in Virginia, where you had members of various hate groups, and had leftist groups in there fighting, in a car and a person died. What kind of advice do you have? Let’s say something like that had — there was a rally, going to be a protest in Texas. What advice do you have on concealed carry and open carry? Obviously you want to bring your gun, because there’s a lot of thugs who have been looting and burning, and doing all kinds of bad behavior when Trump was elected, when Trump was inaugurated. We saw it happen at Berkeley, Chicago. Anyway what advice do you have for going into a crowd where there’s a lot of anger and there could be violence with an open carry or concealed carry?
Emily: Well here’s what I’ll say first. There are many states that actually have laws against carrying a firearm into a permitted protest or rally. Texas is not one of those states. So in Texas, so long as you have that license to carry, you may have your weapon with you at one of these protests or rallies.
Just because the law says its okay doesn’t mean that it is without restriction or limitation and I would just issue some words of caution which is that in these situations, which I think can get very tense, if you have a visible weapon, you’re kind of opening the door to the guys on the other side of this protest. Because they see your weapon, and you get mad, and it gets heated, and you exchange words. It is really easy for them to call the cops up and say “Hey that guy with the 1911 on his belt, pulled it, and he pointed at me.” You’re sort of giving them a head start on making up these tales, which you might think that I sound really paranoid and crazy saying that, but we say it in road rage all the time where people will just, you know, get in a road rage, look at that pickup truck, and say “I bet there’s a gun in there” and calling the police and say “oh yeah, that red pickup, the crazy guy waved a gun at me” and it’s totally illegitimate but it requires a police response.
Sam: Emily Taylor, independent program attorney, U.S. LawShield. This is why you need U.S. LawShield folks. There are so many questions and so many answers, and they’re on call, and the entire lawyer staff, Emily included, are there to help you.
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