Time-Place-Manner (TPM) Restriction
The legislation that formed a bridge between the licensing and fee approach we have seen so far and the deadly weapon law which we are building toward was Substitute Senate Bill 20, introduced by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1870. This was a time-place-manner (TPM) restriction and marked a new departure in terms of public carry regulation in Texas.
TPM is another element of the helpful vocabulary which law scholars are currently using to discuss the history of gun control laws. It is precisely what it sounds like—regulations about when, where, and how certain weapons can be used or carried in public. These types of restrictions usually operate as localized firearm or weapon bans within certain “sensitive times or places.” Current regulations about schools and government buildings as “gun free zones” would be TPM laws.
The Texas TPM law of 1870 tried to prohibit carrying any weapon at all, not just “deadly weapons,” at most public and private gatherings. The bill proscribed any “bowie-knife, dirk or butcher-knife” or “fire-arms, whether known as a six-shooter, gun or pistol of any kind.” It is important to note that this language included rifles, muskets, and shotguns.
Even more broad than the list of weapons was the list of knife- and gun-free spaces (too many to repeat in full here). But suffice it to say that they listed everything from scientific presentations and circuses to polling places and church services; the law even tried to ban the presence of weapons at private parties on a person’s own premises.
Unlike previous bill we have seen, this one did not include a bond or surety mechanism. Offenders were tried and then fined or jailed. Moreover, the maximum fine was so high that it placed prosecutions in the more illustrious and respected District Court jurisdiction rather than the lower Justice and County Courts.