While I'm keeping my permit current for many of the reasons you stated above, I still think the entire permit scheme is itself an infringement on our enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
The very idea of asking permission to exercise a right is at odds with the concept of it being a right at all, instead of a "privilege" to be doled out by a clerk after you pay your money, sit through the useless classes and hit the paper for your "qualification."
I would like to see the day when we scrap the entire thing and stop asking permission to do things that we were endowed by our creator with the natural right to do in the first place.
Why should the law-abiding bear the burden and expense of "proving ourselves worthy" to clerks or politicians in order to exercise the same rights every criminal gets for free?
While I understand an argument can be made that the "right to carry" is a directive straight from the Bill of Rights as opposed to a license to drive an automobile being a "privilege" that can be granted by an authority. However, I still believe that the CCL process creates a much safer environment if people who decide to carry a firearm in public have been vetted to some degree for their mental and criminal status and have been trained on the laws and at least rudimentary instructions on how to use their gun. My CCL class was anything but a useless exercise. I had been shooting all my life so the "how to aspect" wasn't needed, but I walked away knowing much more about the laws and knowing that if I ever, God forbid, had to shoot someone to protect life or wellbeing, my life would change forever. I've also seen enough insanely stupid acts by uneducated, inexperienced gun owners to know that these people walking around with a gun in public are almost as dangerous as a criminal in the act of using a firearm!
We'll see how it all pans out, but this new rule in Texas is certainly a huge risk and we better realize that it is entirely possible that it could backfire and set gun rights back 25 years!