Trail Blazers Blog:

Among the more interesting data points – and there were a slew of them – to come out of Thursday’s Senate committee hearing on two high-profile gun bills was a recent survey conducted by the Texas Police Chiefs Association.

Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo, in his testimony, pointed to data that the vast majority Texas police chiefs surveyed opposed open carry of a handgun. He added that if open carry were to pass, a greater majority supported licensed open carry over unlicensed.

That information, at least the first part, didn’t apparently move the Senate committee. The panel voted 7-2 – with only Democrats voting against – to send to the full Senate the bills on so-called campus carry and licensed open carry of handguns.

But given that law enforcement continues to be central to the debate, we wanted to learn more about the survey. And James McLaughlin, executive director of the police chiefs association, on Friday passed along more detail on the six-question survey.

The group recently sent the survey to 800-plus police chiefs – covering municipalities, college campuses, independent school districts and others. Though Acevedo said around 285 responded, a hard copy of the survey results shows a response from 192 chiefs.

Here are the major data points from the survey, which can be seen after the jump:

– Nearly 75 percent opposed open carry in Texas.
– 90 percent said that if open carry passes, a license should be required.
– 94 percent said an openly carried handgun should have to be holstered.
– 71 percent said that holsters should have retention ratings, which help secure the gun.

While that certainly shows a consensus, it’s harder to make broader generalizations. McLaughlin said the responses came in blind, so there’s no way to know if these chiefs are mainly from big cities or small ones, East Texas or West Texas, and so on.

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But he said the association does want to point out some of the challenges that law enforcement has already faced with those who openly carry long guns. And he said there are certain issues that, if open carry passes, the association would like to see dealt with.

Those include ideas mentioned on Thursday by Houston Assistant Police Chief Don McKinney: boosting the standards for training and holsters.

They didn’t all respond to the questionnaire but its a fair assumption that these police chiefs are representative of the whole bunch.

First of all note the man who brought all of this up to the committee – Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo.  Acevedo is the chief cop who pressed for “no refusal” blood draws.  That’s right, he believes that police have a right to strap your arm down and shove a needle in you to test for BAC.  But then also recall that he believes gun enthusiasts need to be vetted by law enforcement.

“Folks, let me tell you what keeps me up at night, it’s these guys. It’s these homegrown extremists that are lone wolves, that are mad at the world, that are angry. And that’s why it’s important for us as Americans to know our neighbors, know our families. Tell somebody. If you know somebody that’s acting with a lot of hatred towards a particular group especially if you know somebody who’s a gun enthusiast or they’re armed with this type of fire arms and they’re showing any type of propensity for hatred, doesn’t mean that we’re going to go and take them to jail, but we might want to vet these people. He may well be alive today had we had the opportunity to do that.”

Finally, the presumed “concerns” and issues LEOs have with open carry have all been thrown around before.  In fact, in Mississippi open carry was going to be the wild, wild West, and blood running in the streets.  Except it wasn’t.  Louisiana is an open carry state, but no one has been hurt from it.

My own home state of North Carolina is a traditional open carry state.  We still all go about our business as usual, women and children don’t run screaming in the streets, and men don’t run around crazy when they finally get to put their weapons outside their waistband instead of inside their waistband.  The sad thing about the open carry bill that has made its way to the Senate is that it is licensed open carry rather than constitutional carry.

The Texas LEOs see the devil around every corner, and bogeymen under the bed and in the closet.  They sound like frightened little girls.  Someone tell them that everything will be alright, and the sun will come up tomorrow.  And for heaven’s sake, Austin needs to get rid of Art Acevedo and send him back to the hole from which he crawled.