Section 1 would be the same as my example 1); RAS would be established merely by seeing something that the law prohibited.
Section 2 would be your defense to being cited for a violation of Section 1 (Hopefully on the side of the road instead of in a court room.)
It's my purely layman's, uneducated and untaught position that the TX law (being poorly written) could be used to provide RAS of criminal conduct merely by discovery of an openly carried handgun in Texas. That's not to say it should be, nor has to be, but only that it can be construed that way. Work with your representatives and get it corrected in the next legislative session or so and it'll go away.
If the TX driver's license law is as you say, I'd think it would be more analogous to example 2), or at least that's the way I meant to express the example. It would not establish RAS merely to see someone driving a car on public roads, one would have to suspect they did not have a license by displaying such behavior as disobedience to some traffic regulation.
A couple problems I have are that other parts of the law which are worded and structured similarly have been interpreted differently, and this interpretation is contrary to the documented intent of the legislature.
I think I know what you meant, but I don't think the wordings in your examples are nearly as analogous to the relevant sections in Texas code as you think. The DL statute basically says it's illegal to drive without a license. "You may not." It doesn't just say a drivers license is required, as in, making a requirement that you
do something in order to do another thing. It doesn't say "Get Y license to do X." It doesn't simply say "driving requires a license." Rather it is prohibitive, saying you
can't do something, i.e. doing X is illegal. Driving is illegal (unless you have a license.) IMO this is definitely more analogous to your first example. I'm not really trying to argue, just, you know, call into question the applicability of what your lawyer buddies said to our scenario. I question everything.
Really the only difference I can see between the handgun prohibition and the driving without a license prohibition is that in one the part about "unless you have a license" is broken out into a separate sentence. Only a damned lawyer could interpret such basic, seemingly unimportant structuring difference to have such an enormous effect.
I understand I'm not a lawyer, so there are ways of interpreting things that I'm not familiar with. To be frank, I'm not super interested in abandoning common sense and sound reason in order to think like a lawyer, not interested in learning to use contrived reasoning to argue against other contrived reasoning instead of just using real reasoning. My opinions won't make for court-ready arguments, I'm ok with that, at least I'm true. *shrug*
Edit to add:
Basically, like this...
License required code says it's illegal to drive unless you have a license. This is like your first example.
No handguns code says it's illegal to carry a handgun, also like your first example, then in another sentence say unless you have a license, just like with driving.
The primary difference is that with the no handguns code, the "unless" part is broken out into another structure with a lot more "unless"es than just if you have a license - there is also "unless you're a cop," "unless you're traveling," "unless it's a club and you're a dog catcher," etc.
Edit2: To be thorough, with the no handguns code, there are also a couple of "unless"es right underneath the prohibiting sentence. Also in the DL part it references additional "unless"es in another section as well. I don't think this changes things, just wanted to head off any ******** wanting to nitpick. It's something I'd to do me if I were someone else.