There’s something extra funny about this you might have missed. Previously, it was possible to find out if a specific individual had a Texas CHL, but you couldn’t just get a whole list like in some other states.
On April 19, the San Antonio Express-News published the names of all the Texas state congress people who had a CHL. To do this, they would have had to submit each name and pay the requisite fee to the DPS.
Then a few days later, saying “in case you missed the list the first time,” they published it again. I blogged about it here.
Their action seems to have put this change in the law on the fast track, all because the Express-News singled out the Texas gov’t folks who had a CHL.
Well, that would likely have pushed the legislature further towards the privacy side of the argument, because of the other provision of the “public records” law with regards to CHLs. Namely, whenever anyone asks the DPS if someone has a CHL, the DPS is required to notify the CHL-holder specifying who made the request. So there was probably a flurry of notifications to various members of the state legislature.
Maybe we ought to send those reporters flowers or something. Their actions probably helped our cause more than anything else.
May 25th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
There’s something extra funny about this you might have missed. Previously, it was possible to find out if a specific individual had a Texas CHL, but you couldn’t just get a whole list like in some other states.
On April 19, the San Antonio Express-News published the names of all the Texas state congress people who had a CHL. To do this, they would have had to submit each name and pay the requisite fee to the DPS.
Then a few days later, saying “in case you missed the list the first time,” they published it again. I blogged about it here.
Their action seems to have put this change in the law on the fast track, all because the Express-News singled out the Texas gov’t folks who had a CHL.
Funny how that worked.
May 25th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Well, that would likely have pushed the legislature further towards the privacy side of the argument, because of the other provision of the “public records” law with regards to CHLs. Namely, whenever anyone asks the DPS if someone has a CHL, the DPS is required to notify the CHL-holder specifying who made the request. So there was probably a flurry of notifications to various members of the state legislature.
Maybe we ought to send those reporters flowers or something. Their actions probably helped our cause more than anything else.