From the legal journal TEXAS LAWYER, December 9, 1996, page 2

In Session: Handgun Law's First Year Belies Fears of 'Blood in the Streets'

by RICHARD CONNELLY

By now, according to the fondest wishes of some plaintiffs' attorneys, discovery battles should be in full flower in any one of a half-dozen or so civil cases rising out of the state's concealed-handgun law.

By now, according to some critics like Harris County District Attorney John Holmes, prosecutors should be bearing down hard on defendants who have recklessly whipped out their hogleg like some

latter-day Dirty Harry just because they got cut off in traffic.

Instead, however, there is . . . the sound of silence. In terms of its impact on both the civil and criminal court systems, the hotly debated concealed-handgun law, which took effect Jan. 1, has been a popgun.

No civil suits have been filed, whether they be wrongful- death claims against shooters or premises-liability suits against property owners. No significant criminal charges have been pressed against licensees solely on the basis of a newly allowed concealed handgun, either.

"Our clients," says Dallas attorney Howard Rubin, a property-management specialist, "have learned to live with the bomb."

"I'm detecting that I'm eating a lot of crow on this issue," says Holmes, a vocal opponent of the law. "It's not something I necessarily like to do, but I'm doing it on this."

That's all music to the ears of State Sen. Jerry Patterson, R-Pasadena, the leading proponent of the new law, who said all along that dire predictions of "blood in the streets" would never come true.

"Anyone who is going to commit capital murder or attempted murder is not going to be concerned about having a license to carry a concealed handgun, which if you don't have that license you've

committed a misdemeanor," he says. "That's bizarre. . . . What the past year has shown is that responsible people can behave responsibly."

Guns and Booze

There are 111,408 Texans licensed to carry concealed handguns, says Laureen Chernow, spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety. Only 1,202 people who have applied for licenses have been denied.

Since the law took effect, there have been 57 "incidents" involving licensees, mostly for possessing a gun while intoxicated or failing to conceal the weapon.

One death has occurred that can be related directly to a concealed handgun, a high-profile case in Dallas stemming from a traffic incident.

A grand jury no-billed the shooter in March, apparently convinced that his life had been in danger from the other driver.

In another case, in Houston, a man who was licensed to carry a concealed handgun faces murder charges, but Holmes and Patterson say the murder weapon was kept on the owner's business premises and could have been there without the concealed-handgun law.

"I think that says something, that we've gotten to this point in the year and in the third largest city in America there has not been a single charge against anyone that had anything to do with a

concealed handgun," Holmes says.

The two most vocal opponents of the concealed-handgun law, State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, and Nina Butts of the group Texans Against Gun Violence, did not return phone calls.

But when the first major report on the law's implementation was given in July, Butts said her group was not impressed with the low number of incidents. "We would be against [the law] even if there

were no shootings," she told reporters at the time. "We feel the importance of the law is to promote the sale of guns, and in a society that is already ridden with violence, we don't need to be

teaching the young people of Texas that part of being a grown-up is carrying a gun."

Weapon Watch

With as little action as there has been in the criminal courts, things have been even quieter on the civil side. While everyone agrees that somewhere out there is a potentially important case of

first impression that hasn't happened yet, so far the impact on the civil side has been nil.

Rubin, a shareholder in Dallas' Malouf, Lynch, Jackson, Kessler & Collins, says he knows of industry groups that have canceled long-scheduled seminars on the new law because it has become something of a non-issue.

The nearly automatic logic of most business owners when the law took effect -- put up a sign in your store banning guns from the premises -- became a little more tortured once lawyers got

involved. In the end, the current thinking goes, it's better to go without a sign than it is to have one.

"Businesses learned that it was foolish to put up a sign," says Patterson. "If you do, you're just putting up a sign telling criminals, 'Hey, all these people here who are coming out with

packages, in the dark as the mall closes, are unarmed,' " he says. "All it would take is the first time for some robber to say, 'I went to that mall because I saw the sign and I knew everyone would

be unarmed,' and you'd have tremendous tort liability."

"With most of our clients, the conventional-wisdom advice is that you may be 51 percent better off not posting signs or taking any steps toward prohibiting weapons," Rubin says. "It's a very close

question, but most of them have decided they're better off doing nothing."

Putting up a sign banning guns may create more responsibility than property owners want, Rubin and Patterson say.

"If you put up a sign banning guns, do you raise your own responsibility for protecting your customers?" Patterson says. "Do you then have an obligation to enforce it, something you couldn't

really do without metal detectors? If you truly don't want guns [in your store], you should have no sign up and only address a situation when you see [a gun]. Then it's a violation of the law,

and you can approach that person quietly and say, 'Please leave.'"

Another potential civil land mine that has been avoided -- so far -- is a gun ban by a shopping mall, despite the fact that the law now allows citizens to carry concealed guns in their cars.

"There have been no shopping-center parking-lot incidents yet, and that was a big question," says Rubin. "If you can carry a gun in your car, but you can be barred from carrying it in the mall, what

would happen if you're walking to your car from the mall without your gun and there's an incident?"

Pistol-Packin' Preachers

Much of the credit for the relatively small number of incidents goes to the training lessons all potential licensees must take. Beyond the basics of gun safety, the courses -- if taught properly

-- emphasize that you could be facing a lawsuit, and some sizable lawyer bills, if you fire your weapon recklessly. The courses also include a hefty dose of "alternative dispute resolution" methods to defuse potentially violent situations without using a gun.

"The $150 they charge will get you a damn good course," Holmes says. "You're gonna know more about what is permissible conduct. I was so opposed to the law that I took the instructors course, and I was pleasantly surprised -- it was very heavy on the law and how guns can get you into more trouble than they can get you out of."

Patterson says he will propose some changes to the law in the upcoming legislative session, mainly to clarify the language and correct anomalies. For instance, he says, because the law bans

guns in church, preachers who live on church property have complained to him that they can't carry a weapon.

It's not known whether West will try to wipe out the law, but Patterson says concealed handguns are here to stay.

"Any attempt at repeal," he says, "will be dead on arrival."

(Ed. note: this is now somewhat "dated", it was written one year after Texas put in shall-issue CCW. As of this writing (March 25^th, '99) there still hasn't been a murder conviction in Texas by a permitholder, there's been no civil suit wins over a shooting, no accidental deaths and an extremely low rate of criminal activity on the part of CCW holders.)