Open carry laws in Texas have taken effect! Yippi-kay-yay!!!! I’m sure everyone is psyched about this! It’s Texas! I’m yelling!
To comply with state liquor rules, the world’s biggest retailer sent a written notice last month to stores that sell alcohol, telling managers to ensure that customers who openly carry firearms under a new law have licenses. Cashiers or door greeters who see someone with a gun are to alert the highest-ranking employee, who is to approach the customer and ask to see the paperwork.
Wait, “state liquor rules?” I want to carry around my gun, in the open, so people know I have a gun—and maybe they’ll like my gun and be my friend, or better yet—stay away!
Wal-Mart and other retailers that sell beer, wine and spirits fall under the authority of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, which prohibits unlicensed handguns in establishments that offer such products for off-premises consumption. An establishment can lose its liquor license if it “knowingly allows” a person to bring an illegal firearm on the premises, said Chris Porter, spokesman for the agency.
[my emphasis]
This is interesting news to open carry enthusiasts who wanted these laws because before you could walk around with a concealed gun and no one was the wiser. Unfortunately, now that you’re allowed to carry guns with a permit that means you have to have a permit to carry guns. Nothing makes prickly gun owners more prickly than having to be asked about their guns.
“I find it offensive,” said C.J. Grisham, president of gun-rights group Open Carry Texas, who has heard from members who shop at Wal-Mart that they have been asked for permits. “I don’t want to be treated suspect by a place that I’m shopping at.”
AHAHAHAHA. That’s me laughing while I try to empathize with C.J.
25-year-old Ashley Bravo de Rueda told Bloomberg that when she went to Walmart to buy some pacifiers and dog food she was carrying a “Bersa Thunder .380 pistol”. You know, as you do—fucking pacifier aisle can be a shitshow, y’all; and don’t get me started on the dog food aisle. Some Nazi walked up to her and asked for her papers!
“She said, ‘Ma’am, you are more than welcome to carry a gun like that, but I’m going to need to see your license,’" Bravo de Rueda recalled.
[...]
“The whole time I felt like I was looking over my shoulder,” she said. “To me, I’m lawfully carrying. I should not be stopped for something that I am not doing wrong.”
Things could be worse, Ms. de Rueda.