Frankly, I just can't stand to keep posting in the other thread. Unless you see a unicorn, after the failed concurrence vote and move to conferencing committee, it is DOA.
I wish I could say that I was surprised but I suspected that this was a Kabuki dance all along. The NRA, despite its facetious claims to the contrary, opposes Open Carry and the NRA has more clout behind the closed doors of the Texas legislator's offices than do the relatively unorganized members of the Texas Open Carry movement.
The time has long since passed for Texas Open Carry supporters to start raising funds for a Federal lawsuit challenging the Texas ban on openly carrying modern handguns.
"Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844, 849, 117 S.Ct. 2329, 138 L.Ed.2d 874 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 35-36, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001),
the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding."
District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 - Supreme Court (2008) at 2791-2792.