Oh come on. It's been legal in Texas since the 19th century to have a gun in your vehicle (or on your horse or buggy) if you are travelling across county lines.
The problem started with ambiguity in older law.
“Texans have always believed that they could travel with a gun, even though traveling wasn’t necessarily defined,” Mr. Isett said.
Since 1996, when the state’s new concealed carry law first allowed those with licenses to carry concealed guns, lawmakers have supported the principal that people didn’t need permits when traveling.
Problem was, nobody quite knew how to define traveling. Did you need to pack a suitcase? Cross the county line? Stay overnight?
In 2005, the Legislature passed a bill to clarify things. It stopped short of defining traveling, saying instead that if drivers met certain conditions, they would be “presumed” to be traveling.
Essentially, you were “presumed” to be traveling if you were not in a gang, not on parole or otherwise prohibited from carrying a gun, not committing any crimes, and did not leave the gun in plain view.
To many prosecutors, the law was as clear as mud. What if a driver met all the conditions to qualify for the “presumption,” but was only headed around the corner for a carton of milk? Was he traveling?
Some prosecutors, such as Bell County Attorney Richard Miller, told their police agencies to keep making arrests much as they had before. In a memo, Mr. Miller advised officers to leave it to his office “to sort out the legal niceties.”
Such policies incensed lawmakers, who said they had created the law to stop such arrests. They also drew the ire of the American Civil Liberties Union, which, in an unusual political partnership, backed the National Rifle Association on the issue.
Not true. My husband was charged with unlawfully carrying a weapon right after the concealed carry permit law went into effect.
He was pulled over for speeding and a mistake in the computer showed he had a suspended license (he did not), and they hauled him to the Williamson County jail on a Saturday afternoon. When they towed his truck, he had a gun in the glovebox and they added the weapons charge.
The next day when he saw the judge, they immediately discovered the clerical error regarding the suspended license and dismissed it, but the judge told my husband to get a lawyer to deal with the gun charge. They didn't care that he was in Williamson County and we lived in McLennan County.
It cost us over $4000 and took 18 months, and he had to plead guilty to disorderly conduct, but he eventually got his gun back and the right to get a CHL.
Nope, it never said anything about "County lines," merely that you had to be "traveling."
This new law merely clearly defines what "traveling" is.
To wit: If you're in your car going somewhere, you're now officially "traveling."
Simple, ain't it?
Hard to believe Austin got one right.
with 254 counties, its pretty easy to do. I pass through 3 to get to work and 4 more to get to my territory.