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.
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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.
Yes that is the reference.
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.
Black people who worked with cattle were called “cowboys.” White people who worked with cattle were called “cowhands.”
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.
End racist gun control!
Restrict guns for everybody! 🎉
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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.
Kyle was a fuckwit who traveled with every intention to shoot people.
He was not a victim of anything.
For doubters:
The “Wild” West had more common sense than today’s conservatives.
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.
they’re afraid because they know if TX cops will cower around outside while school kids are massacred inside, then they sure as shit aren’t going to rush in to gOoDgUyWItHgUn at some fair with drunk texans
There are some people who both start and end every gun debate with the “good guy with a gun” argument. Nothing gets through the impenetrable logic of “it makes sense to me”.
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.
If I had one political wish, it would be that conservatives are forced to live in the world they want to create.
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!
I agree with the Republicans, lets have more guns at Trump rallies, and mandatory aiming lessons.
Somewhere between: “Guns everywhere!” and “Guns nowhere!” is the idea that will make no one in America happy.
I don’t understand. I went to the Texas state fair last year. They were turning people away at the gate for having folding pocket knives or even Swiss Army knives. There where metal detectors and they where searching bags for weapons of any kind. Who is being banned from carrying guns inside the fair? The police?
Maybe that was after the shooting.
I wasn’t allowed to bring a pocket knife in probably 20 years ago. Weird because I am pretty sure the belt I did wear in would be a more effective weapon than that tiny knife.
Not a Texan, but back when you had to have a permit for concealed carry in Florida, they had wands and metal detectors, but you could just show the sheriff your CCW permit and you’d be allowed in. I assume that’s what they do in Texas too. Not sure what they’ll do now that you don’t need a permit in Florida.
Just have “gun cabins” like “smoker boxes”, where all the gun owners can sit and stare at each other.
I’ve gone to the Texas State Fair when I was a kid back in the late 80’s and 90’s…it’s just a bunch of salesmen and food for the most part these days (kinda was then too, just had more actual activities for kids to participate in)
Ken Paxton is such a piece of shit.
When you’re a piece of shit your fellow pieces of shit just let you get away with felonies. And the clowns keep re-electing him.
It’s almost like they WANT an incident
I was there the night of the incident last year. I was afraid of a stampede BEFORE the shooting, it was that crowded. Yeah, guns need to be banned or Paxton needs to provide a realistic solution.
Bans like this are straight silly. How exactly do we propose to stop anyone from carrying? Maybe some TSA style security theater? We going to scan thousands of people coming into fairgrounds?
Now people like me will obey the law, and some will not. Now I am unarmed, and they are. People planing mayhem, or people who prone to it, will simply ignore this. And in some states, it’s perfectly legal to carry on private property even if the owners ban it, you can only be forced to leave under threat of trespass. In others, you’re going to jail if caught.
Being a gun nut, I’m leaning towards the latter. If a property owner says, “No.” (to anything), I’m inclined to side with them.
metal detectors? pretty easy since it’s a ticketed event
How do you “simply ignore” the security screening? Have you never been to a festival or event?
Well, you’ve obviously not been. There are ALREADY metal detectors and you get scanned going in.
Stop being afraid!
You know, like people wearing masks trying to avoid COVID. Turn that saying inwards, snowflakes.
There’s not much excuse for ignorance on this in 2024, you wearing a mask was never to keep you from getting Covid, it was to stop you from spreading it if you already had it. Though I imagine you were one of the idiots who treated it like a chin diaper.
Have you let the people who studied it know, clearly you’re an expert on communicable disease.
Is the fairgrounds privately owned or state owned? It affects the law.
It’s not that they want one, it’s that their symbols of “freedom” are worth more than the lives of people.
Allow guns, but no bullets. And then the fair sells more deep fried bullets.
You joke about deep fried bullets, but this is Texas. They deep fried butter. I don’t even know how that’s possible.
Shrug I’ve seen deep fried ice cream. Just need to be quick :p
I’m always quick!
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Good, goood, ban all firearms, so when some nutcase pulls another Uvalde there will be nothing stipping all the fairgoers from getting riddled with bullets while the cops bumble around outside of the gates
pulls another Uvalde
You mean where the police don’t act and instead stand around? Man it almost seems like law enforcement not acting should be the focus not the fact people are unarmed.
Every event like this will have security with the local PD on alert if they call. That’s how it’s supposed to work - “good guy with gun” often gets shot by police response if you hadn’t been keeping track.
I fail to see your logic? The slavecatcher patrols are where the problem lies, so ban a bunch of random stuff? Might as well ban shoes, pants, bags, and people under the age of 44, that would make the fair safer!
as if random civilians with guns wouldn’t bumble around more and also shoot the crowd?
Damn, what fair are you going to where people are randomly shooting into crowds? Sounds like you have bigger problems
I was referring to the fair in your hypothetical smartass
I’m not sure if the solution to a psycho firing in a crowded fairground is for amateur shooters to also fire in a crowded fairground at whomever they think is the instigator.
Very cool internet stranger! Nobody said that was the solution to anything
Someone certainly implied it.
