Little Evidence at Hand as Legislature Prepares to Debate 'Open Carry'

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The biggest debate in the upcoming session of the Legislature is expected to involve whether to allow people to carry guns openly down the street, Newsradio 1200 WOAI reports.

  Several bills have been introduced to allow 'open carry,' in Texas and Governor-Elect Greg Abbott says he is ready to sign an open carry bill. Meanwhile, the well organized, Bloomberg-funded group 'Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America' says it is prepared to fight Open Carry legislation, saying it will make it a lot tougher for police to tell the 'good guys' from the 'bad guys' on city streets.

  So do 'open carry' laws make our streets safer, as advocates claim?  Do they make it more difficult for police, as opponents say?

  The problem, according to Dr. Roger Enriquez, a profession of criminal justice at UTSA, is that nobody knows.  Congress in the 1990s banned federal funds from being used to study the issue.

  "We need to know empirically what works, what doesn't work and how can we improve it," he said.  "It really is a public health concern."

  Gun rights organizations in the 90s were afraid that federally funded research dollars would be 'targeted' at professors and academic groups who are known to oppose the carrying of firearms, and the 'research' that was produced would back up efforts to restrict gun ownership.

  But the result, Enriquez says, is that lawmakers are uniquely unprepared to discuss the issues that will come up as part of an 'open carry' debate.

  "This wouldn't be the first time that the Legislature would take a 'ready, fire, aim, approach," he said.

  "There's not a whole lot out there, and if there is research, it has almost always been funded by someone who has a horse in the game," he said.