The lawyer we hired recommended that my husband plead guilty to disorderly conduct rather than risk going to trial. The CHL law was only a few weeks old and she said that the right to carry a gun while traveling had changed with the new law. Spending the night in the Williamson County drunk tank scared my husband pretty bad. We were young and had absolutely no experience the "the justice system", so dealing with bail, court, and all that was pretty scary to us. A weapons charge is pretty serious and if he had been found guilty (which he would have since the gun WAS in his truck), we thought that would have made him ineligible for a CHL for the rest of his life. The whole process was expensive, we were newly married and in the process of moving, and we were trying not to have to spend all of our house down payment on a lawyer, so we did what she told us to do. I'm glad the state has clarified the law, finally, but we'll never get our $4000 back. It still pisses me off a little. I understood why you pled, I am just surprised that they charged you with anything, since it was their mistake!
We asked if we could have the gun charge thrown out, since the original reason they found the gun in the truck was because of a clerical error about the suspended license. (A clerk had entered a refusal of a breathalizer on my husbands license instead of the right person's, taken it off, but then left on a fee pending, which caused his license to show up as suspended.)
The cop told my husband he was under arrest for driving with a suspended license. When my husband told him he didn't think that was correct, the cop told him that he had refused a breathalizer something like 5 years prior. My husband told him that must be a mistake, he had never been pulled over for DUI or refused a breathalizer, ever. I guess the cop thought he was lying.
So then when the cop found the gun during the search/inventory he got really mad and was yelling and screaming at my husband things like "What's this? What's the gun for? Why do you have a gun in here? Why didn't you tell me you had a gun in here?"
It didn't even occur to my husband to mention the gun. He was in shock that he was being handcuffed and put in the back of the police car after being told his license was suspended for refusing a breathalizer he didn't know anything about!
Anyway, they said that they would pursue the gun charge since it was found during an "inventory" prior to the towing, not a "search" and that those two things were somehow different. I still don't understand it. The whole experience was bad.