Texas Big On Extremism, Religion And Guns But Last In Education, Health Care, Poverty And The Necessities To Help Its Citizens To Have A Better Life

AUSTIN — The Texas Senate has given its final approval to a bill that would allow licensed gun permit holders to openly carry handguns, sending the bill to the House.

 

Tuesday’s 20-10 vote in the Senate comes on the heels of Monday’s 20-11 vote to approve Senate Bill 17, which would make open carry legal for those with a concealed handgun license.

 

The bill would allow concealed handgun license holders to display their guns in shoulder or belt holsters.

 

Texas is one of six states — California, Florida, Illinois, New York and South Carolina — along with Washington, D.C., to prohibit open carry. According to OpenCarry.org, 14 states require a permit or license to open carry; 30 states allow open carry without a permit or a license, and in some cases the gun must be unloaded.

 

Texas easily has the most gun-friendly reputation. From manufacturers to dealers, Texas has the most federal firearms license holders in the country. It has few restrictions on gun ownership, and the state has actively lobbied gun makers to move to the state.

 

Texas also allows the public display of long guns, such as rifles and shotguns, and open carry advocates have staged high-profile rallies at the Alamo and state Capitol. Concealed handguns are allowed inside the Capitol, where license holders can bypass metal detectors.

 

Twitter @sheriffali

 

 

Associated Press Published By USA Today

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/03/17/texas-senate-gun-open-carry/24892513/

Two prominent Americans — an Eminent Social Scientist and the President of the United States — decided to answer the question: How have America’s churches failed the poor? Americans give to Religion 82.5 Billion Dollars Annually.

Their answer was one deeply congenial to the progressive mind:

 

 “They’ve been too obsessed with the culture war.”

 

“Over the last 30 years,” Harvard’s Robert Putnam told The Washington Post, “most organized religion has focused on issues regarding sexual morality, such as abortion, gay marriage, all of those. I’m not saying if that’s good or bad, but that’s what they’ve been using all their resources for … It’s been entirely focused on issues of homosexuality and contraception and not at all focused on issues of poverty.”

 

President Obama’s version, delivered when he shared a stage with Putnam at Georgetown University, was nuanced but similar in thrust: “Despite great caring and concern,” the president remarked, when churches pick “the defining issue” that’s “really going to capture the essence of who we are as Christians,” fighting poverty is often seen as merely “nice to have” compared to “an issue like abortion.”

 

It would be too kind to call these comments wrong; they were ridiculous. Not only because (as Putnam acknowledged) believers personally give abundantly to charity, but because institutionally the churches of America use “all their resources” in ways that completely belie the idea that they’re obsessed with culture war.

 

As Mark Hemingway of The Weekly Standard pointed out, “Even the most generous estimates of the resources devoted to pro-life causes and organizations defending traditional marriage are just a few hundred million dollars.” Whereas the budgets of American religious charities and schools and hospitals and other nonprofits are tabulated in the tens of billions. (Indeed, as Bloomberg View’s Megan McArdle noted, some of that money — from Catholic sources — paid Obama’s first community-organizer salary.)

 

Twitter @sheriffali

 

 

Open New York Times Link For Full Article:

 

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-do-churches-fail-the-poor.html?_r=0