TEXAS CHL HOLDERS DEFY THE ANTI-GUN LOBBY'S STEREOTYPES

 The first time I fired a gun - a .22 caliber rifle - it was under my father's supervision.  I was a 10-year-old, and my father made sure that I understood what a gun could do.  There followed several sessions of parental lessons on gun safety.  Eventually, we went squirrel hunting, and by the time I was 12, my father had presented me as a birthday gift a .22/.410 over-and-under rifle/shotgun.

Although I did do some hunting as a teenager, my gun experience leaned  more toward target practice. And, still today, I enjoy the firing range. Over the years, I came to view as a necessity the owning of handguns. Consequently, I also made sure that I qualified for a Texas Concealed Handgun License (CHL).

To become a CHL holder in Texas is no easy matter.  To qualify, intensive hours spent in a classroom and on a firing range are required.  In addition, a thorough background check is also a requirement.  All told, from the time I applied and met the requirements, it was more than 2 months until I received my license.

Because of the rigorous background check, Texas CHL holders make up one of the most law-abiding groups of Texas citizens.  A comparison of Texas Department of Public Safety statistics on CHL holders with the general population reveals that those individuals willing to go through the required training and the background check are among the least likely of  Texans to be involved in crime.  But, that is what one would expect of responsible gun owners.

For example for calendar year 2011, there were 518,625 active holders of CHLs in Texas. Of 63,679  felony convictions for that year, a mere 120 amounted to convictions of CHL holders, representing a conviction rate of 0.1884% for the group.  Of the 1,779 robbery convictions, none was of a CHL holder. Of 1,529 terroristic threat convictions, only 1 was of a  person possessing a CHL.  Of  461 murder convictions, 3 were of CHL holders.  Of the 25 kidnapping convictions, none was of a CHL holder.  And there were no convictions of CHL holders for assaulting public servants, as opposed to 780 in the general population.

For the same calendar year, 2011, there was a total of 143,725 license applications issued.  Of that number, 494 were denied. For various reasons, 825 licenses were suspended,  and 973 were revoked.  These statistics are a strong indication that Texas DPS does not sit back and relax once licenses are issued, but, instead, engages in an ongoing oversight of the Texas CHL program.

CHL holders would probably agree that the most basic incentive for gun ownership is that of self-preservation and the protection of family, friends and property. If a criminal, for example is cognizant of the possibility of a potential victim being armed, then it is less likely that his quarry will indeed become a victim.  In Texas, the state government is absolutely supportive of the 2nd Amendment, and the population, as a whole, is in agreement.

From Brownsville, Texas, one need only cross the Rio Grande into Matamoros, Mexico, where the folly of banning gun ownership is on tragic display.  In Mexico, private gun ownership is basically outlawed.  As a result, only the police and the bad guys are armed; and, unfortunately, most of the time, the local police are in cahoots with the criminals. As a result, kidnappings are not uncommon, and the takeover of private property by criminal elements is not infrequent.  But in Brownsville - where bad guys also reside - criminals, in computing the odds, are much more likely to take citizen gun ownership into account, and that accounting is a deterrent in its own right.

If gun laws that are now in force were rigidly enforced, there would be no purpose to ill-advised efforts to ban private gun ownership.  Increasingly, Americans live in an out-of-control, pagan culture, which demeans the value of human life.  Liberal Hollywood, for all the celebrity involvement in anti-gun movements, continues to turn out the most violent of films, and our youth continue their enthrallment with the likes of Quentin Tarantino and his "splatter-fest" cinematography.  At the same time, the disintegration of family values has produced new barbarians, such as the three black teenagers accused of the Duncan, Oklahoma, atrocity, who have not learned the value of human life. Nevertheless, the present administration in Washington is hell-bent on penalizing honest gun owners, putting them on the same level as the lowest elements of American society who persist in their high rates of violent crime.

Texas CHL holders are far from being bad guys.  Taken as a whole, they represent a cadre of traditional, law-abiding citizens. If certain politicians in various quarters of the United States did not react in such a brain-dead manner, the Texas CHL program and its administration by the Texas DPS could well be a model for the rest of the country.