The Smoking Gun

The second amendment of the Bill of Rights gave American citizens, "The right to bear arms," which basically means having the right to own a firearm to protect your property and self. Since then a lot has changed forcing state governments to create laws to protect citizens from their firearms. Most laws are basic common sense laws, yet sometimes a bill gets passed that might leave someone scratching their head or questioning the logic behind it.

In the State of Texas, guns are no strangers in the state of the, "cowboy" stereotype. In most states people are required to register a firearm after purchase, yet in Texas you do not need to register them. In Texas you do not need to have a permit to carry a shotgun or rifle yet you do need a permit for a handgun. It seems odd since shotguns and rifles are a higher caliber than most handguns on the market, yet it is legal to have a pickup truck with a gun rack full of shotguns, given that the owner purchase them legally. In Texas it is illegal to bring a handgun into a building that derives more than 51% of its income from the sale of alcohol, for example a bar, yet there is no law that states you cannot bring a shotgun or rifle into a bar and order a beer.  One law that hits a 9 on the weird scale, was this Texas law, "It is unlawful for a handgun license holder to carry a handgun on the premises of a correctional facility or within 1000 feet of such, on the day of execution", this law would make anyone think it was written during the wild west when they would hang criminals.

In the state of Colorado, it is unlawful to carry a handgun in a motor vehicle unless the gun's chamber is not loaded. A handgun has a magazine where the bullets, or rounds, are fed in and then the magazine is fed into the handgun. After that you need to slide the top part of the gun back which will load the first round into the chamber, making it ready to fire. This law is strange because even if the chamber is unloaded the handgun is still loaded, and it is still in a motor vehicle. Another law is that if a person is on a snowmobile, any firearms on board must be unloaded during travel. Not only does this law make no sense to people of South Texas who never seen a snowmobile, but also to people who travel in the woods and might encounter a hostile animal. It would be very difficult to load a handgun while running away from a grizzle bear. In Kentucky it is illegal to shoot any wild animal, protect or unprotected from wildlife preservations, from an automobile, but you may shoot from a boat, unless prohibited. It is illegal to shoot a wild animal from the back of a pickup truck, but it is legal to shoot a wild animal from a rowboat.

All states in America think a like when it comes to not allowing ex felons, or people with a criminal record to apply for a gun license, but as you can see each state has its own laws when it comes to telling the people what they can and cannot do with their firearms. The nation's right to bear arms is a right people hold close to their chest, right above their gun holsters. Every law has to have a reason for its creation, so it makes you think that of the laws written in this article, all of them had a specific reason for becoming laws in the first place. It does make for a humorous point of view.

(For more information, contact Jesus Garcia at jesusgarcia@dusty.tamiu.edu.)