A constitutional carry bill that was being considered in the Texas state Legislature was dropped by the Speaker of the House after a gun rights activist came to his house to advocate for the bill, according to The Dallas Morning News.
What happened? A bill sponsored by state Rep. Jonathan Stickand (R) sought to allow Texans to carry a gun without a permit or a license.
That bill had been pending in committee for about four months, so one gun rights advocate decided to apply some pressure to House Speaker Dennis Bonnen (R) and other two other legislators.
Chris McNutt, the executive director of Texas Gun Rights showed up at the homes of Bonnen and Republican state Reps. Dustin Burrows and Four Price earlier this week. None of the lawmakers were home—since the Legislature is in session, they were in at the state capitol in Austin.
Why did Bonnen react this way? Bonnen wasn't at home, but his wife and young children were home. He was extremely upset that McNutt would come to his home and make his family feel threatened.
"If you want to talk about issues and you want to advocate, you do it in this building," Bonnen said. "You don't do it at our residences. Threats and intimidation will never advance your issue. Their issue is dead."
How did McNutt respond? McNutt accused Bonnen of overreacting to his visit.
"If politicians like Speaker Dennis Bonnen think they can show up at the doorsteps of Second Amendment supporters and make promises to earn votes in the election season, they shouldn't be surprised when we show up in their neighborhoods to insist they simply keep their promises in the legislative session," McNutt said to DMN.
What now? A planned committee hearing related to the bill was cancelled.
"...once they started harassing, one, the speaker, and then these other representatives for no good reason, then I think it's incumbent upon me not to reward bad behavior or make them believe that somehow this harassment led to me giving them a hearing," said state Rep. Poncho Nevarez (D), who runs the House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee. "I want to expand Medicaid, but if you came to my house and camped out and threatened to kill me or made my family uncomfortable so that I would expand Medicaid, guess what? I'm not going to do it. Because that's not any way to do it."
(H/T The Hill)
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