> All bets are off for Texas.
We have everything locked up too just as you describe. We just have a lot of places to buy them, it's not like Wal-Mart here has a bin in the middle of the isle full of AR's next to the bin of Pokemon stuffies. Only pellet and BB guns are found on the shelf.
I don't know why I'm being pedantic, guns here are insane for many reasons but not because of this one. What bothers me is once you do buy it, you can just carry it anywhere you want now. Like random guys in MAGA hats holding what looks like a machine gun on a street corner is no longer an unusual sighting. It's weird, when I was a kid, my dad had rifles mounted to his truck rear window and it was common. Then, there was what seemed like a zero tolerance decade or two when guns were only on the news (gang violence) or in a gun safe (for hunting only). Then the pendulum swung to the wacky side of guns everywhere.
My kids school recently hosted a "gun recycling day" recently, with good intentions I think, but obviously once it occurred the parents were riled up with "you seriously invited people to bring their guns to the school! Where are the guns? Did they get moved off campus? etc" It's technically a private school and the event was hosted by the affiliated church, but still, pretty tone deaf to have that kind of event on the same property as a couple hundred elementary students
I live on the edge of the suburbs in a Blue state, at least where I live (and further on towards the city) open carry gets you the attention you're looking for from the police. People don't tend to do it.
I am not sure about further out. I know people in Michigan who keep a piece in their glovebox. I've seen in the movies what you talk about - the gun rack in the truck cabin. None of my rural relatives ever did that, not even in Michigan which is pretty gun-friendly away from cities.
> I don't know why I'm being pedantic, guns here are insane for many reasons but not because of this one.
Yeah, I mean. In Illinois at least, the guns get into the hands of the bad guys overwhelmingly because of straw buyers. Not because of "the gun show loophole". A small number of guns are obtained through theft. Mostly it's straw buyers, at least when it comes to guns used in crimes.
My family is filled with outdoorsy people (myself included), and although the numbers don't paint a picture of legal CCR owners being problematic, the wide array of people I've known who do carry makes me wonder how the hell it isn't a bigger problem. All manner of unhinged weirdos, some of whom pretty openly muse about the opportunity to shoot the kind of person they don't like. (Lots of normal people too - but plenty of weirdos)