Coming out of the gun closet... how far ir prudent?
I have no problem using my Texas CHL as a photo ID. It is not an offense to show it, or even to tell someone that you are carrying. Doubt me?
Here's the law. Just don't carry "recklessly."
It sits in my ID case right next to my driver license. It's kinda fun to watch the different reactions of store and bank clerks, especially at Whole Foods, a quasi-health food/New Age store selling overpriced yuppie chow. It usually throws them for a loop since I have glasses, a goatee, and look as if I might have wandered in from a grad school seminar. Many people have been propagandized to believe that only gang-bangers, terrorists and rednecks carry. Demonstrating that we "normal" folks practice self-defense can go a long way towards smashing stereotypes based on fear and ignorance.
It's a demonstration of who we are.
One time I showed it to board an aircraft. The lady behind the counter looked up at me nervously and cleared her throat. "Are you -"
"No," I answered politely and smiled. This was pre-9/11. I have not flown since then, but next time I do I will display my CHL. To do otherwise would mean that the terrorists win, right?
If word gets around that Fason packs, so be it. Part of me wants to shout it from the mountaintops that we are citizens, not subjects, and therefore self-defense is
www.a-human-right.com. Another part says we should practice discretion, otherwise they'll throw the N-word at us (gun Nut).
A couple of years ago I drove out to the gun range 25 miles north of town, and decided just for grins to put one of my rifles in the rear window of my pickup. It's an evil black pre-ban SKS with collapsable stock and 30-round magazine. This being Texas, it is legal for a non-felon to possess a rifle or shotgun. No license or registration involved. Also legal to walk or drive down the street with it. There's a tradition (more in the countryside than the cities) of driving around with a rifle or shotgun in the rear window of your pickup truck, so it's not toally unheard of, although it marks you as a Bubba..
Well let me tell you what happened on my way out to the range. Nothing! No cops pulled me over. However, I did notice that nobody tail-gated me. As Robert Heinlein said, "an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."
