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A lot of people give Florida a hard time for producing the most insane news items, but it’s high time Texas got credit for being just as batshit, though far more organized.


ABC 13 reports that House Bill 1935 was signed into law last week by Gov. Greg Abbott. The law will make it legal to openly carry “knives, daggers and swords” starting September 1, meaning it is about to be Game of Thrones in Dallas, everybody.

Fox 7 Austin reports that proponents of the new bill say it’s simply clarifying a knife length issue that has been coming up again and again:

“What this law does is it gets rid of all that grey area and simplifies the law,” said AJ Postell, co-founder of Lone Star Gun Rights. Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed House Bill 1935 into law, removing size restrictions on knife blades carried publicly by adults. “The way the law currently is is that any knife with a blade length over 5 ½ inches is prohibited, so with the new law, it basically takes all that prohibited language off the books thus allowing knives over 5 ½ inches of blade length, also daggers, double-edged knives, dirks, even swords will soon come legal September 1,” Postell said.


It may actually be a good thing that people aren’t getting into trouble over minor grievances related to knife length, since petty laws are an easy way for officials to hassle people. But it’s also not that comforting to know that blades of any length are now permitted at “bars, schools, churches, airports, government buildings, hospitals, correctional facilities, sporting events and polling locations.”

The Austin police don’t believe many people will actually take advantage of “open carry” in regards to broadswords, since relatively few do with existing open carry gun laws. But they do offer this warning: