Texas Gun Rights Advocate Sues Tarrant County Over Commission Meeting Controversy

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Bruen case was good in a lot of ways. One way that anti-gunners like, though, was that it did say that certain “sensitive places” could be gun-free zones. Those include places like courthouses.

So it’s unsurprising that many government centers are gun-free zones. You and I can’t carry in such a place.

However, like it or not, police officers and former police officers often get a different set of rules. I don’t think they should, but they do, and that’s simply what the law is. They can go places while armed, we can’t.

In Texas, a gun rights advocate is suing his county, among others, after he was denied entry into a county commission meeting because he, a former cop, had a gun.

A gun rights activist at the center of a pair of tumultuous Tarrant County Commissioners Court sessions in January has sued county officials in federal court over his detention and removal from the meetings.

C.J. Grisham, an attorney and gun rights activist from Temple, was detained at the Jan. 14 meeting when he attempted to enter the courtroom with a pistol. The disruption escalated to violence and resulted in the arrest of another man who filmed Tarrant County sheriff’s deputies and demanded their names and badge numbers.

Grisham, who argued he was legally allowed to carry a firearm in the court as a former law enforcement officer, was not arrested, but left voluntarily after Sheriff’s Office employees, including Sheriff Bill Waybourn, said he would not be allowed to return to the courtroom with his weapon. Grisham is a retired federal counterintelligence special agent.

Grisham returned to the commissioners court the following session on Jan. 28, when County Judge Tim O’Hare instituted a new decorum policy. He was removed for saying an expletive during his comments.

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Worth, Grisham claims his First, Second and Fourth Amendment rights were violated in those sessions. He is demanding punitive damages of $250,000, as well as attorney fees, compensatory damages to be determined by a jury and any other relief “as appears just and proper.”

Now, I’m not getting into him saying an expletive, but I’ll just leave it at how members of Congress are dropping f-bombs to members of the media as a matter of course these days and I find it kind of stupid to take an issue with a single one by a member of the public.

As for Grisham being armed, that’s in our wheelhouse.

My first thought was that maybe Grisham was one of those who think that waltzing around armed to push boundaries is a good thing, that getting the cops called on him is a win. Well, looking back at our archives, that’s not the case. He’s actually against that sort of thing, calling one such activist a “cancer.” He’s actually tried to push for a more sane way of normalizing the carrying of firearms.

While I’ve never talked to the man, it seems to me that he’s a sensible voice for gun rights in Texas. He’s not trying to be a poke in anyone’s eye just for the sake of being antagonistic.

If he’s a former cop, and I see no reason to doubt him, and Texas law allows him to carry a gun into a commission meeting, then yeah, he’s got every right to do so, and keeping him out is a violation of his civil liberties.

I hope he wins so big that they have to rename the county after him.