Epilogue

Texas Republicans lost power in the election of 1873 and became increasingly marginalized in state politics over the ensuing decades. Even though Democrats hated their Republican rivals and tried to undo as many of their signature policies as possible, they left the public carry laws in place. If we think of public carry as a partisan issue, this becomes a thorny question to resolve; but when we remember that doing something about violence was a bipartisan policy, it is less so. Democrats may have preferred licensing, but they failed to agree on how to go about it. Their rivals, however, agreed on taking a new approach and then generated a consensus the following year about how to improve it—all of this from a brand new party composed of some of the poorest voters in Texas! The reason Democrats kept it is most likely because they realized that it worked.

The most important aspect of the deadly weapon law was that it changed what was considered normative behavior. Without the law, anyone could carry a gun or knife, and anyone could be doing so for preemptive self-defense or for nefarious reasons. The absence of a written statute, combined with rampant violence, created an atmosphere where no one could tell the difference between the proverbial “good guy” with a gun and the “bad guy” with one. The solution that Republicans settled on was to make the mere presence of a gun or knife in public an indicator of lawlessness and malicious intent. Officers now had a reason to stop people carrying weapons, and residents could file reports about armed passersby whom they encountered.

Another key feature of the deadly weapon ban is its approach to protecting a demographic minority. Republicans, despite the fact that they controlled much of the government from 1867 to 1874, were never a numerical majority. Many white, Conservative/Democratic voters chose not to participate in elections during that period because they thought it was a way to undermine the Republican government. A small number of former Confederate officials were also barred temporarily from voting. The Republican minority recognized that, once Conservatives/Democrats started voting again, the political landscape would necessarily change. It is doubtful that they expected to be ousted from power so quickly (or so violently), but they certainly would have wanted to make the most of their first few sessions as the dominant party. That they responded to widespread intimidation and violence by disarming the public sphere is instructive. When their own lives were on the line, Texas Republicans realized that when everyone is armed, minorities will always be outgunned.