New York Times – by MANNY FERNANDEZ
HOUSTON — A small meeting of a group seeking tougher gun laws was interrupted Saturday at a suburban Dallas restaurant when the woman who helped organize it saw something outside that startled her: at least two dozen men and women in the parking lot with shotguns, hunting rifles, AR-15s and AK-47s.
The scene unfolded near AT&T Stadium in the suburb of Arlington about 30 minutes after three women associated with the local chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America met inside the Blue Mesa Grill.
“I was terrified,” said the woman who helped coordinate the meeting and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she said she feared for her safety. “They didn’t want to talk. They wanted to display force.”
The armed group of men, women and children was made up of members of a gun rights organization called Open Carry Texas, and they stayed in the parking lot about 10 or 15 minutes to protest the Moms Demand Action meeting and then left.
The long-distance face-off — word of which spread on the Internet on Facebook and blogs — was the latest skirmish in a battle that has been intensifying over the limits and freedoms of the Texas gun culture. Gun rights advocates have been gathering in public places with their firearms to try to convince people that the carrying of unconcealed guns in broad daylight should be no cause for alarm. But such displays do indeed frighten many, even in a gun-friendly state like Texas, and the so-called open-carry gatherings have grown bigger, bolder and more problematic for the police and city officials.
Leaders of Open Carry Texas disputed any suggestion that they were intimidating the women. They said their members stayed far away from the restaurant, posed for a group picture and left without incident. They said the gathering was peaceful and legal. Texans are allowed to legally and openly carry what are known as long guns, including shotguns and rifles, in public.
“This is how Moms Demand Action works,” said C. J. Grisham, 39, the president and founder of Open Carry Texas. “They don’t want guns anywhere in the public square, and they’ve made that very clear. No matter what we do, they’re going to label us intimidating. It doesn’t matter how we carry, where we carry.”
Police officers arrived at the location, but made no arrests. “There were no issues that we are aware of,” said an Arlington Police Department spokeswoman, Tiara Ellis Richard. “Texas law does not prohibit the carrying of long guns.”
Open Carry Texas encourages its members to walk around their neighborhoods and towns carrying their weapons out in the open. The Dallas-area members learned where the mothers’ group was meeting — by pretending to be interested in their activities, the woman who coordinated the meeting said — and made it a stop on their weekly walk on Saturday. At a gun rights rally at the Alamo in San Antonio last month, Moms Demand Action held a counterrally nearby and, gun advocates said, sent their supporters into the crowd to take pictures. “They crashed our Alamo event,” Mr. Grisham said. “Let’s crash their event.”
Leaders of Moms Demand Action — a national group that formed after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and modeled itself after Mothers Against Drunk Driving — said the women inside as well as restaurant customers were frightened by the armed group. “Sadly, these bullies are attempting to use guns to intimidate moms and children and to infringe on our constitutional right to free speech,” the group’s founder, Shannon Watts, said Sunday in a statement.
The carrying of a concealed handgun in public in Texas requires a state-issued permit, and those holding such licenses are prohibited from displaying their handguns openly and unconcealed. But the open carrying of a rifle in public is largely unregulated and requires no license. In Texas, in other words, you are prohibited from walking down the street with a small revolver in a holster on your hip but entitled to be out in public with a large shotgun slung over your shoulder. Gun rights’ groups are pushing to change the law to allow the open carrying of handguns, and using their freedom to carry rifles as part of their campaign.
The woman at the Arlington restaurant — a mother and a member of the local chapter — expressed dismay that the gathering outside the restaurant was permitted by Texas law. “They’re walking around with killing machines strapped to their backs in a suburban area,” she said.
The only Manny Fernandez I ever heard of played NFL football on that unbeaten 1972 Miami team and when invited to the White House to meet with Obama, he rightly refused to go.
BTW, soccer mom “mothers” at the restaurant–you’d never make it out here in the mountains of far west Texas! so you’re gonna protect yourselves from mountain lions with plastic knives and forks?