Second Amendment Advocates Up in Arms
over DPS Appeal with Paxton Leading Fight
Capitol Inside
September 29, 2022
Texas Republican leaders and lawmakers are being characterized as "anti-gun stooges" by Second Amendment advocates in the midst of a court fight that the Department of Public Safety and Attorney General Ken Paxton are waging to uphold the state's power to impose age restrictions on the purchase of firearms here.
The furor stems from a summer decision by U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman who found that the constitutional carry law that the Texas Legislature approved in 2021 is unconstitutional because it bars people between the ages of 18 and 20 from having handguns in the Lone Star State.
Paxton appealed the ruling to the U.S. Fifth Court of Appeals with documents that he filed last week without an announcement to the public or news coverage until Thursday. The Texas State Rifle Association is supporting the lower court decree with language that is sugar-coated compared to the scorching rhetoric that the more conservative rival group the National Association for Gun Rights has employed to describe DPS Director Steve McCraw and the state police that Governor Greg Abbott controls.
“Judge Pittman rightly ruled that all adults should be allowed to carry their handgun openly or concealed, but once again, government officials in the state of Texas are proven to be anti-gun stooges,” NAGR president Dudley Brown said. “Steven McCraw and DPS leadership don’t want young single mothers or military aged adults to have their rights restored – it’s pathetic, and quite frankly, a violation of their oath of office.”
The Pittman decision appears to be in sync with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this summer in a fight on the rights of states to apply the Second Amendment how they see fit. Pittman was appointed to the federal bench by Republican Donald Trump.
The Texas appeal has put Abbott and the Republicans in Austin in the unusual position of taking a stand against states rights and the Second Amendment in a singular stroke. The NAGR's state chapter - the Texas Gun Rights - portrayed the DPS as an enemy of American firearms owners.
“The evidence is clear: the Texas Department of Public Safety does not want law-abiding 18-20 year old adults to exercise their God-given right to keep and bear arms,” according to Texas Gun Rights executive director Chris McNutt. “Gov. Greg Abbott needs to lead this state and get the Texas DPS in line. We fought hard and successfully passed Constitutional Carry in Texas, and the ruling by Judge Pittman rightly uses the Bruen decision from this summer to restore gun rights to a large segment of adults who’ve been wrongly stripped of their constitutional rights.”
While the TSRA is part of the nation's largest gun organization, the National Rifle Association has been uncharacteristically mum on the court orders that have made Abbott and his GOP allies at the Texas Capitol look like Second Amendment supporters in words only.
“Deep down DPS knows that their appeal is unconstitutional and immoral, and we are confident that the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court will tell them to take a hike,” Brown asserted.
Abbott has made a so-called Back the Blue campaign a central part of a re-election bout with Democratic Beto O'Rourke in recent weeks. Abbott and O'Rourke are squaring off on Friday night at 7 p.m. in the first and last televised debate of the 2022 gubernatorial competition here.
But the governor attempt to curry favor with law enforcement omits the fact that Abbott and the Republicans have routinely ignored the police in their opposition to the gun bills that the GOP-controlled Legislature has approved in recent years at the statehouse in Austin. Abbott has been touting a police defunding sanctions measure that he had lawmakers ratify in 2021 while arguing in TV advertisements, emails and social media posts that O'Rourke favors cutting law enforcement budgets based on remarks as a presidential contender in 2020 and 2019.
While tuning police chiefs and sheriffs out during debates on gun bills, Abbott has backed McCraw and the DPS all but unconditionally, staying silent on the state agency's most monumental breakdown in modern history with its actions during and after a mass school shooting in Uvalde in May. Instead of taking action against the state police for having 91 officers who refused to risk their lives to save dying children at Robb Elementary, Abbott has lauded DPS for courageous leadership in the border mission Operation Lone Star and a fight against fentanyl that the governor has sought to showcase.
more to come ... |
