DALLAS (AP) — The State Fair of Texas is laying down a new rule before millions of visitors flock through the gates for corn dogs, deep-fried delights and a friendly wave from a five-story cowboy named Big Tex: No guns allowed.
But that decision by fair organizers — which comes after a shooting last year on the 277-acre fairgrounds in the heart of Dallas — has drawn outrage from Republican lawmakers, who in recent years have proudly expanded gun rights in Texas. On Wednesday, the state’s attorney general threatened a lawsuit unless the fair reversed course.
“Dallas has fifteen days to fix the issue,” said Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, “otherwise I will see them in court.”
Tensions over where and how gun owners can carry firearms in public are frequent in Texas, but the standoff with one of the state’s most beloved institutions has moved the fight onto unusual turf. The fair has not backed down since cowboy hat-wearing organizers announced the new policy at a news conference last week.
The fair, which reopens in September and lasts for nearly a month, dates back to 1886. In addition to a maze of midway games, car shows and the Texas Star Ferris wheel — one of the tallest in the U.S. — the fairgrounds are also home to the annual college football rivalry between the University of Texas and University of Oklahoma. And after Big Tex, the towering cowboy that greets fairgoers, went up in flames in 2012 due to an electrical short, the fair mascot was met with great fanfare upon its return.
Fun fact:
Back in the wild west, it was common to “check your guns” apon entering almost every single town. Yes, you needed protection from bandits and outlaws, but entering you left them with the sheriff and picked them up leaving.
That’s a common sense gun law if I ever saw one.
Too bad the GOP has no common sense anymore, just slop rhetoric they got from some losers who want little girls to get pregnant.
Wyatt Earp enforced such laws and he was about the most manly tough guy you can get. He’s an example of everything they think of as anti-woke and he restricted gun access within city limits.
If I recall it started a big gun battle and then a quasi Guerrilla War across the entire territory.
Funnily enough, usually it was to keep black people and Asian people from being armed while turning a blind eye to armed white people. Gun control is racist.
That I don’t know, but I do know that black people made up a huge portion of the cowboys in the wild west. 25% or more. After the Civil War freed slaves rode west. Some settled and built homes, many more became cowboys.
Gun control is racist.
Louder for those in the back. Volumes have been written on the subject, and the information is a only a quick search away.
Many of you are familiar with Reagan, as Governor of California, banning open carry because of the Black Panthers. Yeah, that gets tossed around a good bit, but the racism inherent in historical and modern gun laws goes far deeper.
So is it less racist if everyone’s arms are restricted or if everyone can open carry? Not trying to be an asshole, I’m just not convinced that asking for guns upon entry is inextricable from racism.
Though I suppose policing an an institution in itself is pretty racist since enforcement is often done by authoritarians who are terrified of others. But that’s not really exclusive to policing, unfortunately; most state institutions are racist.
Anyway, I agree with you on some level, but surely there’s an answer here that doesn’t subjugate specific classes of people.
Edit: Then again, it’s in the interest of the state to have a monopoly on violence, so idk what to think. I’m just sick of not doing anything and not having any ideas when mass shootings happen.
Honestly? More education (and possibly more exposure) and less fetishization, although I’m not quite sure how to achieve the second one.
Back when my parents were in school, schools had shooting teams (my high school apparently had an award-winning women’s team), and my dad even brought a gun to school once to show to a teacher (it was an older gun and the teacher was a gun collector). They spent the whole of lunch period talking about how cool that old gun of grandpa’s was.
Because back then a gun was just a tool, and one more people had access to, since a lot of people were still out on the farm and such. My dad learned from a young age that guns were dangerous, and how to properly handle them, and pretty much all his classmates did too.
But then the Republicans started the, ‘we have to regulate!’ and the ‘but think of the children!’ nonsense because that was when the Black Panthers started going around armed, and a bunch of white people were suddenly uncomfortably aware that minorities could defend themselves from racial violence if they wanted to.
And then the Republican Party turned around and started making guns an ‘identity’ thing, so suddenly they became a symbol of Republican so-called ‘values’, and people began obsessing over them like they were rare jewels or some such nonsense. It didn’t help that the Democrats were happy to jump on the bandwagon as the ‘we’re totally against guns so you can tell we’re different from them!’ group to provide a pearl-clutching counterpoint.
And so now we’ve got, well, all the fetishized and forbidden-fruit bullshit. Guns are kind of seen almost like cigarettes on steroids: the cool and dangerous thing that all the rebels and ‘strong independent types’ have.
I’m a bit In despair as to how to get us to stop doing that. Certainly other nations, like Switzerland, have lots of guns and gun access and don’t have our problems. But they definitely don’t build identities around firearms either.
Edit to add: of course Switzerland has actual functional health care, including mental health care, so I imagine that helps.
Gun control is racist.
Indeed, which is why they have auto-switch Glocks in Chicago ordered off the internet but Kyle had to endure months of struggle sessions disguised as trials.
Private event, their rules. Fuck off Paxton. This “good guy with a gun” stuff is bullshit and everyone knows it, but by all means puff out the chest and bluster for the idiots in your constituency.
Why doesn’t Texas AG sue trump for banning guns at his rallies?
You guys… I’m worried this is a MAJOR oversight!
Surely they’ll allow unrestricted firearms in the gallery at the next Texas legislative session
LiberalGunNut™ here! I say hell yes, let them put their money where their mouth is. Force them to argue against.
FFS, I’ll never know why liberals can’t do shit like this. Texas ought to have Democratic lawmakers salivating at proposing such a law.
1 Let’s allow everyone to carry guns everywhere!
2 Oh, shit. Maybe not such a good idea. Let’s not have guns everywhere thousands of people congregate and have beer, too. Or at trump speeches. Or at NRA conventions….
3 Republicans: Fuck you! GUNS EVERYWHRE!1!
Somewhere between: “Guns everywhere!” and “Guns nowhere!” is the idea that will make no one in America happy.
