In the United States the history of modern concealed carry started with Georgia. In 1976 that state's governor, Zell Miller, introduced what became the model for later laws. His effort was inspired by an NRA director and former border patrolman, Ed Topmiller. The heart of the law was that the job of administering the shall issue permit process was given to a non-law enforcement, elected official.
Georgia joined a handfull of other states allowing concealed carry, including Vermont, where no license is required; New Hampshire, with a 1923 law; Washington, which made issuance almost mandatory in 1961; and Connecticut, where in 1969 a Handgun Review Board was established to minimize arbitrary denials.
The Indiana Sportsmens Council, assisted by the NRA-ILA, passed a mandatory issuance law in 1980, then had to sue the state police and other agencies and elected officials into compliance.
A trend started, with CHL laws passed in Indiana, 1980; Maine and North Dakota, 1985; and South Dakota, 1986.
The national media ignored these until 1987, when Marion Hammer tackled Florida. The anti-gunners were horrified. Obviously concealed carry would turn Florida into another Dodge City. Blood would flow in the street. Fender benders would turn into firefights.
The fight was tough, but the Unified Sportsmen of Florida succeeded. The dire Predictions? A year later the president of the police chiefs association, who had opposed the bill, was asked if he had kept track of all the problems the law caused. "There aren't any," he said.
That opened the way. CHLs swept through Oregon, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, 1989; Idaho and Mississippi, 1990; Montana, 1991; and Alaska, Arizona, Tennessee and Wyoming, 1994. Then came 1995, with Arkansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Nevada, Utah, and Virginia. In 1996 Kentucky, Louisiana, and South Carolina passed CHL laws, and West Virginia passed it again, their state supreme court having struck down the first one. Alaska, in 1998, had to override a governor's veto to remove restrictions from their law.
Passing CHL laws was never easy.
In 1993 CHL was back again, and this time the big state media let loose with the typical "blood in the streets" predictions, both in quotes of anti-gunners and echoed on the opinion pages. They called for the people to contact their legislators.
We did. I really think the popular support for the law caught the media by surprise. Then the Governor, Ann Richards, weighed in with the news that she would veto any CHL law the legislature passed. Politically, that should have been the end, but popular support would not let the bill die. Trying to find something the governor would sign, the Legislature ended up passing a law that only called for a statewide referendum on CHL, not authorizing anyone to actually set up any program. Governor Richards vetoed it anyway, saying that the people of Texas didn't need to vote on something like CHL.
Two years and a new Governor later George W. Bush signed the 1995 Texas concealed carry bill.
Throughout the long struggle to get a concealed handgun law passed for Texas there were a number of people who risked their political lives to accomplish what many thought might be an impossible task. Two stand out.
One is Texas Senator Jerry Patterson, who sponsored and shepherded a number of the bills, including the successful 1995 effort and the equally important 1997 revision. He happens to be a classmate of mine from Texas A&M University, Class of 1969.
The other is Susan Gratia, who rose from the tragedy in Killeen to provide essential testimony at a critical time. She has since, as Susan Gratia-Hupp, become a Representative in the Texas Legislature.
The law went into effect September 1, giving the Texas Department of Public Safety about three months to write all the procedures, design the paperwork, and train enough Qualified Instructors to teach the required course DPS wrote. They did it.
A loophole creating a conflict between concealed carry rules and alcoholic beverage license regulations made a revision of the law necessary. That was accomplished in 1997, and went into effect 1 September of that year.
Two years after it started, with 1,800 instructors and over 180,000 licensed persons, the Texas violent crime rate continues to drop. As happened in all the other CHL states, concealed carry is working.