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New Texas Law Makes It Easy For Criminals To Openly Carry Handguns

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Nation’s Loosest Open Carry Handgun Law Takes Effect In Its Second-Largest State

With Americans already on edge over the very real threat of mass shootings, Texas just compounded those fears for many of its citizens by allowing nearly one million people in the Lone Star State to carry handguns in plain sight. 

On Jan. 1, Texas became the largest state to legalize the “open carry” of handguns. Houston, meanwhile, is now the nation’s largest city where open carry is legal, and along with Dallas and San Antonio, it joins only Philadelphia and Phoenix in the top 10. 

Some suggest the new law is much ado about nothing, pointing to the fact that 45 states already allow some form of open carry. Presumably these same folks believe the “status quo” — a horrific epidemic of gun violence in which the US averaged one mass shooting per day in 2015 — is something worth preserving. 

But for Texas, which was home to three of the eight deadliest gun violence incidents of the year, the law is hardly the status quo. Pushed through by GOP legislators at the behest of pro-gun lobbyists and constituents, the law is vaguely worded with apparently little concern for its unintended — and likely deadly — consequences. 

The law directly applies only to the 850,000 people in Texas who have concealed handgun licenses, as well as those with recognized permits from other states. However, it’s unclear whether police can legally approach those who are openly carrying handguns and request to see their documentation. Naturally, this could embolden criminals and people with little or no firearms training, giving them cover if they choose to pack heat in plain sight.  

Posted by 1 Million Moms Against Gun Control on Friday, August 9, 2013

“We’ve changed things here a lot and we’ve not thought this through,” Charley Wilkison, executive director of the state’s largest law enforcement officers’ union, told the Associated Press. “People will drive without a license and we can sure count on them to carry a weapon without training or license.”

Even if police do approach gun holders and ask to see their permits, experts say those who refuse to produce them have committed no crime and can’t be arrested. In practice, police say they’ll be reluctant to inquire about permits due to the fear of harassment lawsuits — a legitimate one given that gun “enthusiasts” who already believe the new law is too restrictive say they’re anxious to challenge it in court.  

“We’re going to assume they’re a license holder, probably,” Austin Police Department training commander Andy Michael told the AP. 

The law allows businesses and private universities to opt out, and many have announced plans to do so. However, people can now legally and openly carry handguns into the lobbies of police stations and other public buildings in Texas, leading to “panic” among employees at places like Dallas City Hall. 

“People have died across the country, and residents and city employees want to know: When should we be worried?,” city spokeswoman Sana Syed told The Dallas Morning News. “There is no barometer for knowing which person is in their right mind to have a weapon like that.”

Unlike open carry statutes in other states, the Texas law doesn’t allow cities to opt out, something Democrats in the Legislature pushed for. 

“As a result of this shortsightedness, Texas is now home to the largest cities in the United States that have open carry laws with no local restrictions,” state Rep. Rafael Anchia, a Dallas Democrat, said in a statement this week, calling the law the “most extreme” in the nation. “I don’t want strange men walking down my street brandishing guns while my daughters are riding bikes or playing outside. My neighbors and constituents don’t want that, either.”

As one of Anchia’s neighbors, I can certainly vouch for that statement, and the law will undoubtedly fuel a spike in emergency calls from alarmed citizens. 

Law enforcement officials say it could also result in those who openly carry handguns becoming targets for violence, or endangering lives by trying to play hero when crimes occur. If you’re a police officer arriving at the scene of a shooting, how do you differentiate between suspects and civilians? How do you even begin to control a crime scene when everyone has a weapon? 

While these chaotic scenarios are hypothetical, another grave consequence of the new Texas law is more certain.

“Any time you introduce more guns into any environment, empirical data has shown, you have more accidental shootings,” Police Chief Mike McClelland told The Houston Chronicle. “You have more suicides, more children shoot themselves.”

 

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Image by Paul Weaver via Flickr and a CC license 

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‘I’m Not Suicidal’: Kari Lake Pushes Hillary Clinton Murder Conspiracy Theory

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April 22, 2024

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Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake is promoting a conspiracy theory suggesting Hillary Clinton wants to assassinate her. Her remarks came just one day before she lost her attempt to have the Supreme Court review what some have called her conspiracy-theory fueled lawsuit about electronic voting machines.

“Lake, who filed the lawsuit during her failed campaign for governor in 2022, challenged whether the state’s electronic voting machines assured ‘a fair and accurate vote.’ Two lower courts dismissed the suit, finding that Lake and former Republican state lawmaker Mark Finchem had not been harmed in a way that allowed them to sue,” CNN reported Monday.

Also on Monday Law&Crime reported that when she filed her lawsuit, a Dominion Voting Systems spokesperson “rejected Lake’s cybersecurity claim, telling Law&Crime it was ‘implausible and conspiratorial.'”

Democracy Docket, founded by top Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias, called it “the end of the road for a conspiratorial lawsuit,” and Lake and Fincham, “election deniers.”

READ MORE: ‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

Lake, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has yet to concede the 2020 election, which she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has a history of pushing exaggerated and baseless claims.

On Sunday, as MeidasTouch Network reported, Lake promoted an old, anti-Clinton conspiracy theory but twisted it to try to make it appear she was in danger from former U.S. Secretary of State and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Lake on Newsmax listened to a clip of Secretary Clinton calling Trump’s fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin a “bromance,” and saying the ex-president is “just gaga over Putin, because Putin does what he would like to do: kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive, you know, journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance.”

Then Lake promoted a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory by responding, “Oh, boy. Oh, that’s really rich coming from a woman like Hillary Clinton, who’s, how many of her friends have just like, mysteriously died or committed suicide?”

“I mean, honestly, that’s rich of her. What President Trump wants is to root out the corruption and deliver our government back to We The People and she looks very nervous. She talked about her friend Mark Elias, Mark Elias has meddled in in his and his cohorts have meddled in the elections.”

She called Democratic policies, “destructive, deadly and frankly, in some ways, diabolical,”and added, “it’s almost comical that Hillary Clinton is talking about Trump wanting to kill his opponents.”

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

“I just want to say as I’m as I’m speaking about this topic, I want everyone out there to know that my brakes on my car have recently been checked and they work. I’m not suicidal. And Hillary, I don’t mean any harm to you. Please don’t send your henchmen out to me. We understand what you’re about. ”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide

 

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‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

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April 22, 2024

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MSNBC top host Rachel Maddow, inside Manhattan’s Criminal Courthouse on Monday declared Donald Trump appeared “old and tired and mad,” as she delivered observations about the ex-president on trial for 34 counts of falsification of business records alleged in the alleged pursuit of election interference to protect his 2016 presidential run.

Trump “seems considerably older, and he seems annoyed. Resigned, maybe, angry. he seems like a man who’s miserable to be here,” the award-winning journalist told MSNBC viewers Monday afternoon.

“I’m no body language expert,” she conceded, “and this is just my observation. He seemed old and tired and mad.”

The New York Times’ Susanne Craig, from inside the courthouse Monday morning reported: “Trump is struggling to stay awake. His eyes were closed for a short period. He was jolted awake when Todd Blanche, his lawyer, nudged him while sliding a note in front of him.”

The Biden campaign was only too happy to pick up and report Craig’s observation, adding “feeble.”

Former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, pointing to his piece at The Atlantic, wrote of Trump: “He has charmed & conned, schemed & marauded his way through life. He was bred that way. But the weariness & vulnerability captured in courtroom images betray a growing sense in Trump that he could wind up as the thing his old man most reviled:
A loser.”

Watch Maddow’s remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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16 hours ago

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April 22, 2024

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Prosecutors for the State of New York in their opening statement drew a direct line between the October 2016  “Access Hollywood” leaked audio and Donald Trump’s alleged “hush money” payoff to two women, including the adult film actress Stormy Daniels, telling the jury it was “election fraud, pure and simple.”

Legal experts are dissecting the prosecution’s opening argument. Professor of law, MSNBC contributor and former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann summed it up, saying New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg “squarely places the NY criminal trial in the election interference/corruption bucket– exactly what the DC and GA indictments allege, just 4 years later.”

“And the NY alleged ‘cover up’ is reminiscent of the two MAL [Mar-a-Lago] alleged obstruction schemes post-presidency, to keep prosecutors from uncovering evidence of that scheme,” Weissmann added.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo late Monday morning in his 45-minute opening argument told jurors, “This case is about criminal conspiracy and a cover up,” according to MSNBC’s Joyce Vance.

READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide

“The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” Colangelo told jurors, CNN reports. “Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”

“This was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures,” Colangelo, a former U.S. Department of Justice Acting Associate Attorney General, told jurors.

“Another story about sexual infidelity, especially with a porn star, on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign,” Colangelo added. “’So at Trump’s direction, Cohen negotiated the deal to buy Daniels’ story,’ and prevent it from becoming public before the election.”

“It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

Vance, an MSNBC legal analyst, professor of law and former U.S. Attorney, explains: “The scheme the prosecution is outlining is catch & kill to elect Trump-awful but lawful. Trump crossed the line into illegality when he created false business records to conceal his payments to Cohen to cover up the payments to Stormy Daniels.”

READ MORE: Fox News Host Suggests Trump ‘Force’ Court to Throw Him in Jail – by Quoting Him

“It’s always the cover up,” she adds.

Professor of law and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman adds, the prosecution told jurors “a straight election-interference story.”

Colangelo, Litman says, told jurors that Trump’s then personal attorney Micheal Cohen “then discussed the [Stormy] situation with Trump who was adamant he did not want the story to come out. Another story…on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign.”

MSNBC legal contributor Katie Phang describes Colangelo’s opening argument, saying he is “working methodically and chronologically through the conspiracy, identifying the main characters and their involvement. He speaks clearly and succintly [sic].”

Trump has been criminally indicted in four separate cases and is facing a total of 88 felony charges, including 34 in his New York criminal trial for alleged falsification of business records to hide payments of hush money to an adult film actress and one other woman, in an alleged effort to suppress their stories and protect his 2016 presidential campaign, which could be deemed election interference.

Watch an MSNBC clip below or at this link.

 

READ MORE: Gaetz: ‘Corrupt’ Republicans Could ‘Take a Bribe’ and Throw House to Dems, Blocking Trump Run

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