By Dean Weingarten
Arizona – -(Ammoland.com)- I have been staying in the Dallas, Texas, metro area for 10 days now. I have seen very few 30.06 signs or 30.07 signs.
They are good sized signs and take up a considerable amount of space, so they are hard to miss, which is part of the legislative intent.
I have noticed them in three places. The sign pictured above is at the entrance to a Dallas pediatric center. I was assisting my daughter in taking her son there for a checkup. As she also has a 20 day old infant, an extra hand was appreciated. The weather was cool for someone used to Yuma, so I put on a light fleece jacket/shirt. It covered my Glock 17. I was not concerned as the permits that I have are good for both open and concealed carry in Texas. I did not know about the sign until we approached the door.
It would have been inconvenient to return to the car while carrying an 18 month old child; I appreciated the wisdom of the legislature on requiring separate signs to forbid open or concealed carry. The sign above is a 30.07 sign. It forbids *open carry*. As I had my jacket on, I understood that the sign was not meant for me, and I ignored it. If I had only been wearing a T-shirt, I could have untucked it and covered the pistol.
I have only seen the signs in two other places. A pair of 30.06 and 30.07 signs were on the window of a gas station in a somewhat less than perfect neighborhood where I was going to gas up while investigating the reported home invasion that I wrote about a few days ago. I decided they did not want my business, so I waited to gas up elsewhere.
No Gun Signs Benbrook Texas PD
The other location was at the Benbrook police station. The Chief there decided to put up the signs on the excuse that a municipal court has offices inside the police station. That excuse is being challenged by the AG for other municipalities. I suspect that Benbrook is awaiting the outcome for those other cases. Perhaps no one has filed a complaint against Benbrook, yet.
My experience in Arizona indicates that these signs will gradually come down. Most private businesses find out, fairly quickly, that these sort of signs are taken as an affront to Second Amendment supporters. They let the business know. As they outnumber disarmists by about 5-10 to 1, as measured by intensity on online polls, they quickly see the advantage of neutrality.
Some are persuaded by the occasional report where a criminal picks a place to attack because it is a “gun free” zone.
Campaigns against concealed or open carry tend to be driven by billionaire dollars, national, with little grass roots support, and transitory.
Campaigns against “no gun” signs tend to be local, grass-root, and ongoing. Members of the gun culture are better educated, more prosperous, and more active than those who wish society disarmed.
The signs that are difficult to have removed are those on government buildings, because they do not have to worry about profits or offending customers. Governments usually have a monopoly in a certain area, so people who need their services, or who are required to use them under threat of force, have far less power than they have over private enterprises.
Texas has gone a long way with the passage of the open carry law in 2015. The law codifies just what government buildings may prevent the legal exercise of Second Amendment rights with signs. The Texas Attorney General is currently pushing to enforce the law, while some municipalities are resisting.
I expect to see fewer 30.06 and 30.07 signs in the future.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
About Dean Weingarten;
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
I like the Texas 30.06 and 30.07 law. I wish we had the same here in Arizona. There is nothing more madding than to go into a restaurant sit down look over the menu, THEN see a sign on the wall that says “NO FIREARMS.