Florida Leads the U.S. in Concealed Firearm Permits, Texas Somehow Far Behind

Frontburner ^ | 13 December, 2012 | Bradford Pearson

[vette6387]

“I could walk into someones home and see .... a whole room full of rifles and not think twice about it.... but one pistol... and I get a little edgy... it’s wierd, I don’t know exactly why I think that way.”

But I thought that Texas was originally part of the “wild West” where the handgun hung on everyone’s hip! You don’t mean to tell us that Texan’s are “squimish” about pistols?

[TexasGunLover]

That’s so strange. Every Texan I know has many handguns and long guns. I have over 30 handguns myself.

Texas trails Florida because of the safe motorist act. People don’t think they need to carry on their person (they do), and it’s perfectly legal to carry in your car concealed w/o a permit.

[ansel12]

As I noted, things are probably different now because of the liberalization of the gun laws, but when I was growing up, people just didn’t get into pistols much.

Texas gun laws used to be very strict, and you could only carry one in the car if you were traveling, I think through two counties, so most people weren’t invested in shopping for, and investing in, or building a collection of pistols and holsters, like today.

My father kept a pistol, but it was always a game of avoiding the law seeing it during traffic stops.

My experience back then was that although there may be a dozen or more long guns and shotguns in the house, there might be a single pistol, people tended to budget for purpose driven guns, and pistols were low on the totem pole.