Constitutional carry has come a long way. We’re now up to 14 states in which the only permit you need to keep and bear arms is the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.
Progress is currently being made in Kentucky (where a constitutional carry bill has passed the Senate) and Oklahoma (where a constitutional carry bill has passed the House). They’re in a gun rights race to join Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho (residents only), Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota (residents only; concealed carry only), South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming (residents only).
Opponents continue to use all the same tired tactics in opposition to constitutional carry laws claiming that it will result in widespread mayhem and ankle-deep blood in the streets. In Oklahoma, they’re holding church vigils and in Kentucky they’re publishing op-eds claiming it’s a threat to public safety because locals can’t possibly be trusted to pack heat responsibly.
There are a lot of good arguments for permitless carry, but the next time you run into a skeptic, here are the top three:
1. Look at Vermont
The main argument against constitutional carry: it’s dangerous! If you let people carry a gun without a background check and training, they’ll shoot the wrong person. Cops won’t know who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy. And there’ll be more people carrying, leading to even more “gun violence.”
You could counter these objections one-by-one, but it’s better to just say, “Look at Vermont.” Green Mountain State residents have enjoyed constitutional carry since the Constitution was enacted. According to the FBI’s 2018 stats, Vermont has the second lowest violent crime rate in the country. And number one is Maine, another constitutional carry state!
That’s not to say Vermont is so safe because of constitutional carry. But their crime rates show that constitutional carry doesn’t create crime. Why would it? Criminals get guns no matter what the law says. Constitutional carry makes it easier for law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms. Which leads us to . . .
2. Carry Permits Punish the Poor.
Some states make getting a permit to carry a firearm cheap and easy (Alabama). Some states make it extremely expensive and time-consuming, to the point of impossibility (New Jersey, Hawaii).
Either way, society’s poorest members don’t have the time or money to jump through all the hoops needed to secure a permit to carry a firearm. Dealing with the expense and bureaucracy involved in getting a license is a huge disincentive. For the states that put up the most roadblocks, that’s a feature, not a bug.
Constitutional carry makes it possible for all Americans to exercise their natural, civil and constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, regardless of their income. Speaking of which . . .
3. Carry Permits Are Unconstitutional.
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitutional states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Requiring Americans to petition the government to exercise an enumerated right is as clear an infringement as requiring Americans to pass a literacy test to exercise their right to vote.
What other constitutionally protected right do Americans have to pay to exercise? The right to free speech? The right to religious freedom?
The people who argue against constitutional carry see bearing arms as an exception to the others in the Bill of Rights. Because danger and death. Which takes you right back to argument number one: Vermont.
Or Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming. Hopefully soon Kentucky and Oklahoma, too. And maybe, one day, even Texas.
I thought we already had constitutional carry, per the 2nd.
Tell that to democrats…
Maybe one day there will only be a handful of anti-gun States. But I doubt I’ll live to see it.
The way things are going, if you and I live to see it then we are doing something wrong or we didn’t do something we ought to have done a while ago.
I’d like to see it happen, but time is getting short. Maybe 10-15 years before I check out.
My health is very poor. It looks like we’re on a similar bus schedule.
As you know, the People have the power to secure liberty today if they would wake up and smell the tyranny.
Maybe one day there wont be any commi states….
The Oklahoma Senate is scheduled to take up the Constitutional Carry bill HB 2579 tomorrow, Wednesday the 26th. If it passes, then the bill will go to Gov. Stitt for signing.
Thanks for the update.
*Fingers crossed*
We SHOULD use the growing list of Con-Carry states as an argument in favor of liberalizing the carry laws of the last 8 Won’t-Issue States. Nevertheless, the objective is to START carry in the Won’t-Issue states; it is NOT to win a philosophical point.
The matter of a fee should be fought on the grounds of the amount of the fee, not the principle of fee-for-right. Suppose the fee were just 1 penny. Would this be the hill to die on? Should we hold out for a zero-fee right-to-carry in the next Won’t-Issue state? We should make every argument possible to “subsidize” the economically unfortunate. E.g., how about charging an extra $10 to every man-of-means so that those on welfare, disability, etc. could get a free permit. The point here is to win sympathy for making carry accessible to everyone, regardless of means.
Voters in the Won’t-Issue states are uneasy with the idea of people carrying without some state-sponsored ritual to vet them. Why should we fight this sentiment when we could reach the goal of converting a Won’t-Issue state to a right-to-carry state? Washington-DC is Shall-Issue with onerous prerequisites. Is DC better or worse than NYC? If we could get NYC and NYState to Shall-Issue that would be better than NYC remaining Won’t-Issue and much of NYState also being Won’t-Issue.
Some day, SCOTUS MIGHT rule against a permitting requirement. However, that day is in the distant future. We are better off getting Shall-Issue permits in the last 8 states than waiting for SCOTUS justices to fly.
Vermont is an especially interesting case; among the other dozen new-comers to the permit-less-carry crowd. But the relevant question is: To what extent do Vermont residents actually carry?
Suppose the number of Vermont carriers were zero, or 1 or just a few. Then the fact that it is Con-Carry wouldn’t mean much. Conversely, if the number of carriers (having no permits) in Vermont were as high or higher than the number of carriers in states with a permitting requirement then this case would be very interesting.
What would be especially interesting would be the number of teenagers in Vermont who actually carry. (One must be at least 16 to carry a handgun in VT.) If there are plenty of teens – as young as 16 – who routinely carry and do so responsibly, then that might carry some weight.
I think it’s pointless to insist that one should not need a permit to exercise a Constitutional right. Our audience isn’t especially moved by this matter of principle. The better way of putting it is that the Democrats insist that it is an outrageous imposition upon poor voters to get an ID and present it when voting to exercise that right; nevertheless, they insist on onerous permitting to exercise the right to carry. We PotG ask merely that the permitting system be Shall-Issue based on objective criteria prescribed by law; and, that these not be so onerous as to deprive nearly everyone in the state of the right to carry.
— The matter of a fee should be fought on the grounds of the amount of the fee, not the principle of fee-for-right. —
Easy enough to deal with. Most states require a motorcycle endorsement on your driver’s license, not a whole separate license. So do the same deal with concealed carry– if a permit is a must, then just put an endorsement on the driver’s license (and make a separate license an option for those who don’t want a driver’s license), and make the fees comparable to what it costs to obtain just a license to drive (even better– legally tie the two fees together so that one can’t move unless the other does).
Easy peezy. Which is why it won’t get done.
Tactically, I like your idea of associating the fee for a CWP with that of a driver’s license. Cause people to start thinking about why a CWP fee should be $400 if their state’s driver’s license is $40 (or whatever the relevant figures for a state might be).
In point of fact, the state’s cost of issuing a CWP is markedly different from the cost of issuing a driver’s license.
At one end of the spectrum is Pennsylvania. All they do is run a background check on their state database (which I assume includes a NICS check.) That, plus a review of the answers to the application question (are you a felon?) shouldn’t cost much.
At the other end of the spectrum is DC which has an extensive regime including administering a test. What do all these hoops cost? Hard to tell; but, what they might cost is not really the issue.
What IS at issue is whether it’s reasonable for the state to require jumping through each hoop. Suppose, for illustration, that a state were to require a sworn police officer to interview 5 references. That would be costly. Would it be Constitutional to require such interviews as a part of the process? Would it also be Constitutional to bill the applicant for that cost? Answers to these questions would have to be litigated; and, likely, not resolved below SCOTUS.
The procedures and costs imposed on applicants probably need to be “litigated” in the court of public opinion. Will the voters in a state stand for the procedures and fees imposed by their legislature? If they do, it’s unlikely that SCOTUS would overrule the voters’ acquiesce.
You say that if no one carries in Vermont then their stats don’t count? Is that basically what you said? If so I beg to differ. I believe that it is the right to carry itself that protects us more than the actual gun being carried. If a criminal has to wonder whether or not you are armed then he won’t be so brave tin his attack.
@Keith: You have to think about the hypothetical proposition I offered. It is a pure hypothetical, so put your mind in that mode.
Suppose VT were a Con-Carry state where no one – not a single person – actually carried a gun. If this were so then the criminals – however few or many – would be cogent of this (supposed) fact. They would commit crimes without fear. If there were few criminals living in VT, there would be few crimes.
Now, how about all the bad things that MIGHT happen if people were allowed to carry guns! Horror of horrors!! Well, under the supposition that no one in VT actually carries guns, then none of these things would be happening. The impact of Con-Carry would be inconclusive.
How would that supposed Con-Carry situation inform decisions by voters in NJ or MD or the other Won’t-Issue states? These voters know their neighbors to be the fearsome, negligent, violent folks they are acquainted with. The see these neighbors every Sunday in church, foaming at the mouth. They worry about their neighbors carrying guns in their neighborhoods.
These NJ/MD voters might imagine VT residents to be just like their foaming-at-the-mouth neighbors. But, since VT residents don’t ACTUALLY carry, they can’t translate VT’s experiences to their home states.
Alternatively, suppose we could prove that everyone in VT carries. Or, maybe 1/2 of the VT residents carry. That would be a different proposition. If VT residents were just like NJ/MD residents then voters in these Won’t-Issue states might begin to consider the possibility that NJ/MD residents wouldn’t shoot-up their neighborhoods.
We can’t sell the example of VT to NJ/MD voters unless and until we can explain to NJ/MD voters that 10% – 20% – 30% of VT ACTUALLY carry and still nothing happens. We need this statistic to make the VT Con-Carry fact potentially meaningful.
Even if we had this statistic to offer we would still have the problem of explaining to NJ/MD voters that VT residents were just like residents of NJ/MD. That’s kind of hard to do. NJ/MD voters just don’t know anyone from VT, so they will have a hard time imagining that VT residents. NJ/MD voters might imagine that VT residents are all Buddhists or Quakers; pacifists. Not at all like the foaming-at-the-mouth neighbors they know.
Generalizing, NJ/MD voters have a hard time imagining what residents of any of the dozen Con-Carry states are like.
The real problem is convincing NJ/MD residents that:
1. – the criminals among them are already carrying and Con-Carry isn’t going to change that at all.
2. – the peaceful people among them will behave responsibly if they were permitted to carry.
I have doubts that NJ/MD voters can be persuaded that peaceful people will behave responsibly absent some ritual – like the state bestowing a piece of plastic.
These kinds of people (NJ/MD voters) imagine that because the state bestows a tin badge on a police officer, that officer behaves responsibly. Because the state bestows a piece of plastic on an armored car driver he behaves responsibly. Because . . . on a body-guard, he behaves responsibly. Some how the state’s tin badge/piece of plastic is magic.
We are trying to break the spell of belief in the magic of tin/plastic. It’s really a tough sell. I doubt we can make it in one step. I think it’s quicker to persuade the voters in Won’t-Issue states to embrace their belief in the magic of state plastic. Eventually (10 – 20 years) they will be ready to move from Shall-Issue to Con-Carry.
It’s hard to believe Texas is so backward on this issue! Probably be passed this term and go into effect 1 Sep.
TX was controlled by dem’s up to the 1990’s. The entire south was controlled by dem’s for 100 years after the civil war and that’s when they set up gun control and some of it still exists today. TX, AR and LA were a little slower to expell the democrats from power.
GA passed a “guns everywhere” bill a few years ago and libs heads exploded. The places they were opening to carry are places that were already 100% legal to carry in MA of all places. You can carry a gun in a bar in MA, you can’t in FL, TX and many southern states. The only place there is a “law” against carry in MA is schools. There is no law against carry at airports, courts, state house, etc. (although there may be metal detectors and other issues but there is not law against it)
In regards to your comments regarding where you can carry in Ma., you better go back and look again. Consuming alcohol while armed in Ma. is illegal. You can sit in a bar but have one drink and your going to lose your permit and get arrested. Trying to bring a gun into a court house is unlawful unless your in Law Enforcement and have business in the court house or your on duty. A lot of malls and stores have signs prohibiting guns now but thats not backed up by a criminal law violation but you will be asked to leave, subject to being arrested for trespassing if you don’t. Walk into Logan Airport in Boston with a gun and you will be arrested, as one guy recently found out. Ma. State Police have no sense of humor when it comes to guns. On the other hand, anyone in Ma. with a concealed permit is probably of much better character than most politicians. Politicians should have to be background checked justblike gunowners before they can become a lawmaker or a State Rep.
I hope you are correct. However that bill is in the House Committee on Homeland Security & Public Safety where the chairman and 3 of the other members are Democrats and 5 are Republicans all we need is for one of the Republicans to vote against it and we’re screwed for 2 more years.
Too many glib comments repeat “shall not be infringed” as if that answers everything. I will only grant that is different from “Congress shall make no law” as an indication that the framers did intend those to be federal only and that the RKBA should have applied to the states right from the start.
The problem is that those comments concentrate on the wrong phrase. Just as “freedom of speech” was always considered to not include libel and slander and defamation and fighting words, so does RKBA not include felons having guns, carrying guns concealed and/or openly, and so on. THAT is the argument which needs addressing.
I think if you look at the historical context – James Madison and others who used the specific terminology “shall not be infringed” – you would find that the phrase was intended to mean what it plainly does: that the RKBA is absolute. I’m not persuaded by your examples (slander, etc.) because these are not examples of reasonable regulation of speech, but of crimes wherein speech is just the tool of execution. Crimes committed with arms are crimes in their own right, punishable as such, where the weapon is also just the tool of execution. Murder, being illegal, isn’t some free pass to torture logic and decide that “shall not be infringed” means “infringe sometimes.”
This is where I would start (but probably not finish) when addressing your argument that “reasonable restrictions” are somehow not an infringement.
i would also add that in those days the punishment fit the crime and if you were deemed suitable for release from prison then you were also deemed to be able to have all rights restored including RTKBA. These days with early release there is parole ad nauseum and rights are still suspended even after parole etc. This IMHO is a blatant abuse of rights. so are the many minor crimes that people are locked up for such as possession of small amounts of weed or even growing other plants for food or medicine for own use that the govt deems you should not be allowed to grow. NO, these are all major infringements on the liberty that the founders held dear. One of the founders (I forget which one now) wanted weed to be the legal drug and tobacco while not illegal certainly not in the place it is now. It was well known in medicine back then and hemp fiber was highly prized and still would be except that nylon (which is not as strong or as long lasting) got pushed at the same time as marijuana got banned and hemp is of the same family of plants
So the RKBA doesn’t include bearing arms? I don’t understand your argument.
MY argument is not that the RKBA is not absolute; I don’t appreciate laws against slander and libel either.
My comment is that “what don’t you understand about ‘shall not be infringed’?” is not addressing what the hoplophobes are saying, and because the first amendment “allows” libel and slander laws, according to the Supreme Court, the argument which must be addressed is why, if ex-felons can be prohibited from having guns, if guns can be banned from places secured by metal detectors, then why cannot other exceptions be found in the RKBA?
The first amendment allows for laws against libel and slander, just as the second amendment allows for laws against murder and injury.
Until felons have their tongues and fingers cut off so that they may not exercise their first amendment rights, we should not allow their second amendment rights to be cut off by forcible disarmament.
Either you are trustworthy enough to bear weapons in polite society, or you are not trustworthy enough to be allowed to be part of polite society.
It sounds like maybe we actually agree, though I didn’t think so when I read your first comment. If so, then my argument above shouldn’t be aimed at you, but at those who espouse “common sense gun laws” under the false premise that, since other fundamental rights are restricted by law then so should second amendment rights be. I contend that fundamental rights aren’t (or at least shouldn’t be) restricted, although certain actions, sometimes taken while exercising those rights, are.
Causing a stampede in a movie theater is a crime because of the danger it causes, not because you said “fire.” You can actually shout “fire” all you want in a theater, and as long as there actually is one – or people understand that there isn’t one – you’re fine. Your right to speech is absolute. Your right to harm people with that speech, on the other hand, is not.
Second amendment rights should be treated in the same fashion, but aren’t. Your right to bear arms is subject to “reasonable restrictions” (i.e. criminalized) because somewhere, someone ELSE might be abusing that right to harm someone by committing an actual crime. This is as if the word “fire” were regulated because someone might say it in a theater, causing harm.
Or better, muzzling everyone who walks into a theater, because one time, at some point in history, back when film was incredibly flammable, someone once yelled “fire” and caused a stampede that resulted in injury.
we don’t muzzle everyone until they take a class, pass a test, and pay for a license so that the state approves them to keep and bear their tongues…the same standards should apply for the rest of our natural and enumerated rights.
We need Sensible Word Control. Any word-spew apparatus capable of fully-automatic word-spew must be regulated, per The Act of 1933. Blogs must be registered. Newsletters must be registered. Any flyer must be registered. Any means of fully-automatic word-spew must be registered.
Oh. And whispering (with “silencers”) must require a $200 tax stamp.
If the First Amendment had the restrictions on the Second, We the People would instantly revolt.
“Constitutional” aka permitless carry is what criminals do all the time. literally.
The slogan for Constitutional Carry should be: “Constitutional Carry, not just for criminals anymore”
+1
I like it. Excellent slogan. It needs to go on hats, t-shirts, etc. I might get a hat made up and wear it since I open carry everywhere.
“Look at Vermont.” Green Mountain State residents have enjoyed constitutional carry since the Constitution was enacted. According to the FBI’s 2018 stats, Vermont has the second lowest violent crime rate in the country. And number one is Maine, another constitutional carry state!”
Vermont has always adhered to Constitutional carry even before the revolution and it becoming the 14 th. state in1791.
Along in 1903 in Rutland Vt. a concealed permit was tried to be instated,when it came before the Vermont supreme court,the justices found” it Repugnant to the Constitution.” the case is entitled STATE v. ROSENTHAL It can be found here. https://guncite.com/court/state/55a610.html
It has been used by the US supreme court in many of it’s 2 nd amendment cases,such as Heller,McDonald and I’m sure will figure into the current NYSPRA V city of NY case yet to be heard.
Yes Constitutional carry has worked in Vermont. Is it a deterrent to crime,perhaps as every Tom,Dick and Harriet up and down the lane and dell can and most likely is armed or could be.
FYI
Does your state have a 2A in its state constitution? Find out.
State Constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms Provisions
http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/statecon.htm
Yes Vermont has one,Art. 16 and it’s more strongly/concise than the US 2 nd.
Const. c. 1, art. 16, codifies
That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the State – and as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.
Of course, Ohio does.
Ahhh…….Vermont, that sparsely inhabited rural state at the crossroads of, well, nowhere. What few people do live there are OVERWHELMINGLY (95%) white and older than the national population (median age in the 40s, compared to U.S. median in the 30s). With those demographics, you could have constitutional anthrax and nothing would ever happen. I’ll agree that inanimate objects don’t commit or cause crimes, if TTAG will agree that culture and demographics matter. You cannot offer Vermont as an example and maintain intellectual honesty.
Punish the poor? The price of EVERYTHING is regressive. That’s the world. The poor always pay a higher percentage of their income for anything compared to someone who makes more money. That’s not an argument. That’s just Tuesday. And “punish”, seriously? Inflammatory histrionics, much? Spare the Capitol Hill fake outrage. You don’t give a #$^# about the poor any other time. They only matter when you need them as a prop in a 2A argument.
The Constitution? That’s the weakest argument of all, notwithstanding the fact that it at least has the virtue of being technically correct. Appealing to the Constitution, which only codifies some rights, speaks nothing to one’s natural, civil, and human right to defend yourself; formal, written constitution or not.
If you’re dragging out these arguments at cocktail parties with antis, expect to get schooled. This is weak sauce.
Vermont: demographics DO matter, but by your own logic, it makes no sense to punish one category of gun owner for the actions of another. You’ve just reversed the scenario: instead of me arguing how safe Vermont is WITH constitutional carry, you’ve shown how unfair it would be to RESTRICT Vermont because of its demographics. Isn’t the same thing true of individuals? Really, you haven’t refuted the point so much as given me another argument to work with.
Poverty: everything you said is correct; fees for exercising fundamental rights hurt the poor disproportionately to others. But even if the concern for that is totally cynical and self-interested, it doesn’t make it not a problem. Or are you saying that since poverty sucks and seems intractable, we shouldn’t bother doing anything about it or pointing out cases in which it is made unnecessarily worse by government overreach?
Constitution: I don’t understand what you’re getting at. If you are arguing that we shouldn’t need written law to codify natural rights, I suppose that’s true in some meaningless philosophical sense. Then again, law is pretty useful when you catch people infringing on your rights and want to do something about it short of murdering them. And actually, the constitution doesn’t really encode rights: it encodes limits on the government, which is why it IS rather useful in this discussion, since government infringement of rights is what we are specifically talking
What arguments will you be using at the next cocktail party you attend?
In Ohio, we all carried, mostly concealed, in all those generations before 2004. It never seemed to be a primary charge. We still open carry without a permission slip. There are cities in Ohio and there is state preemption on gun laws (Ohio Revised Code 9.68).
The problem with most articles on Constitutional Carry, they are focused on mainly concealed carry for all states and open carry is secondary. Most conceal carriers are against open carry, this is where Constitutional Carry is flawed. You can open carry in Kentucky, since its inception as a state. Most states you can not even open carry right now. Open carry in 30 states require no permit, 15 states with permit, and 5 states not allowed. So, with 20 states not really allowing open carry it will be a lot of work to get Constitutional Carry through the legislature. Oklahoma requires a permit to open carry. Another often overlooked item of Constitutional Carry is the open car carry in states. Open car carry, in plan site and glove compartment, is also lawful in Kentucky, which is not allowed in most states. So, when you talk about Constitutional Carry does it include your vehicle, probably not. That is a real problem and no laws involving Constitutional Carry are addressing it.
“So, when you talk about Constitutional Carry does it include your vehicle, probably not. ”
It does in Vermont for handguns,as there is a Fish and Game law prohibiting loaded rifles and shotguns in motor vehicles,which I think if challenged would be found to be in violation of Vermont’s Article 16.
In Kentucky, you can open car carry with a loaded weapon of any type, such as a pistol, rifle, and shootgun. Constitutional Carry is flawed in it only addresses your pistol and not all firearms. If, Constitutional Carry were to encompass all firearms I think I could support it more, but it is for the concealed pistol carriers. Constitutional Carry does not address all firearms as a right and surely does nothing to address the car carry problem in most states. Until, Constitutional Carry really addresses these concerns it is still a none starter to reach a national level.
In Colorado, your vehicle is considered your home. We also have the “Make My Day” law – a warning against home invaders. Technically, I can conceal-carry in my vehicle while waiting in the school parking lot for my child. However, I would have to lock my firearm in my vehicle if I wanted to exit.
That’s how I happen to read the Colorado Revised Statutes. Your state and your mileage may vary. Dealer prep not included. It’s always a good idea to know your state’s statutes. Peace.
“Most conceal carriers are against open carry,”
That’s, in part, at the heart of my post further down. Licensing of concealed carry is a bad thing for rights.
I almost forgot to address another problem with Constitutional Carry. Most Constitutional Carry proponents are focused on pistol carry only and not all firearms carry. Kentucky is an all firearms open carry state and most states limit even this if they say they are open carry. So, hopefully all these Constitutional Carry laws in these 14 Constitutional Carry states includes all firearms for carry. I really do not know.
Here is something interesting. Does your state have the right to bear arms in its constitution? California, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and New York have no provision in their states constitutions for the right to bear arms. This was compiled in 2006.
http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/statecon.htm
HOW`S OUR ”VIRGINIA`S IS FOR LOVERS ” STACK-UP WITH THESE OTHER STATES ? I`M THINKING THAT WE`RE HOLDING IN VERY GREAT STANDARDS AMONG THESE OTHER STATES !
I don’t have time to go into it here, but the history of gun control started in Cleveland Ohio in 1874 with the Women’s Temperance Movement. Follow that to Prohibition, giving women the vote, bootlegging and the Chicago mobs and the repeal of Prohibition and the Grand Daddy of them all, the 1934 National Firearms act which nobody challenged so the Government continued to pass unconstitutional gun laws.
Short version.
Bingo.
The pendulum swings both ways. While Kentucky and Oklahoma are taking steps towards Constitutional Carry, Colorado is taking steps towards overthrowing the Electoral College. Colorado’s legislature passed, and their Governor has vowed to sign a bill to commit Colorado to the so-called “FairVote” compact.
That means they’ve got 181 electoral votes, out of the 270 that they need. If they can get those last 89 electoral votes, this country will never see a Republican president again.
They would have to amend the Constitution article 2 section 1 to change how presidents are elected. The only thing they will do is nullify their votes.
maybe john edwards was right
maybe there are two americas
i want to be in the free one
not the occupied one
Gun Control was practiced in the Old West too. Various towns had ordinances prohibiting people going armed. All that was unconstitutional too, and routinely ignored. In other words, those local laws failed to prevent shootings and violence because the people who tended to do all the shooting and the violence could give a rat’s ass about gun control laws.
Just like today, gun control laws of the Old West worked only on the people nobody needed to worry about to begin with.
Laws only work on the law abiding.
When a law becomes unjust or flat out unconstitutional it is null and void.
Why do I carry a gun,,. ,. Because a cops to heavy
4. Licensed carry allows for the normalization of privileges in place of the exercise of a right. Once licensing takes root, industries grow up around it and will lobby against removing it. Some licensed individuals identify as somehow being “special” and will resent efforts to remove licensing. Politicians and voters become less willing to change a licensing system that seems to “work well enough.” Lawfully carrying a firearm becomes known as “having your concealed” and people all but forget about the RIGHT to bear arms. Licensing makes reinstating the exercise of the unalienable individual right to keep and bear arms that much more difficult in the future. It’s one more argument you have to make, one more hurdle you have to overcome, in the struggle to restore the unalienable individual right in your state.
Resist licensing of this right that is essential to the security of a free State. Insist on your exercise of your unalienable individual right and do NOT accept a privilege in its place.
Agree completely. Licensing is nothing more than removing a right and selling it back to you for a fee that they can change on a whim. Yes sadly i have to deal with it here in commiestralia to be able to practice and compete or even be able to get ammo to go hunting. Unless you are involved in the criminal world here unregistered guns are not easy to find and i dont particularly want to be in that world however if it keeps getting worse it may just come to that then i will get whatever i damn well please and not just what they say i can have
I always enjoy reading your comments. It’s obvious that the fire of liberty burns in your heart.
America will be just like your homeland if the people here don’t kindle that fire and wise up. Incrementalism favors tyranny but too many seem lazy or complacent and think they can just phone it in. My job is to keep poking them with the freedom stick.
In 96 when the shit came in here we had the biggest protest rallies we have ever had in the history of australia… it was law abiding people involved though so no burning, smashing etc that goes on with the left…. 800,000 in brisbane Queensland alone, let alone the other state capitals. Sadly they did not go armed and sadly they then just went home and bent over and took it. My family were amongst those that bent over but they did not have to give up as much at that point as they had a farm and semi auto .22’s were still deemed to be available to farmers for pest control. The rest of us had to give up anything semi auto though it was mostly the trash that got handed in. There is still plenty out there that never did but those that didnt dont speak of it.
Exactly, and well stated. An example was the fight in MS in 2015/16 for permitless carry. One block of opponents to that was the people who made their living as “firearm instructors”. They knew they would lose some income as a result of permitless carry, but it turned out that it wasn’t as much as they feared, and they adapted. Likewise the State Police (not all, but some) objected for the same reason. We still have a few local officials – judges and mayors – who try all kinds of nit-picking reasons to undermine the right to carry sans permit. So far they’ve lost every time when dragged into court. 🙂
I should have fought against licensing in my state but I deferred to other patriots that had been fighting alongside me in the previous decades. Before I bowed out, I warned them. Now, every last one of them, that are still breathing, tell me that my warning was correct and they should’ve fought against it.
Being right is a piss poor substitute for what we have now. Some of my greatest shame is that I didn’t fight when I knew better. I acknowledge my blame and try to warn others.
True. Sometimes “I told ya so” is the only thing you can say, and hope that’s enough to get their brain cells firing.
When you look at the House version of CONCEALED CARRY RECIPROCITY ACT OF 2017 you do not see any language about car carry across state lines and the word transporting is the only wording. If, you can not transport your firearms across state lines or within your state then what good is it. An anti-2A state will just pass a none transport bill or limit your stay in the state to less than 24 hours like Illinois is doing with their semi auto ban proposal for non residence.
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/101/SB/PDF/10100SB0107lv.pdf
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20190124/illinois-bill-introduced-to-ban-many-firearms-accessories
IF Constitutional Carry means that someone can be allowed to carry a handgun, concealed or not, without ANY formal training, without a background check to se if they have ever been committed to a mental institution or arrested for any crime of violence such as assault and battery, or whatever, then I am N O T for
Constitutional carry. I live in Ma., have had a Concealed Carry permit for almost 50 years and still carry sometimes, depending where I am going. Having such a permit in Ma. means that I am of equal character, if not better character than many of our lawmakers in Ma. I do not want to see a ex-con with a gun or a wife beater, or a car thief or a bugler or a junkie or a pot head or any of the scum I spent 4 decades working to get locked up be able to carry a gun.
Apparently Constitutional Carry can have different rules or stipulations for different states. If it means a undesirable person can carry a gun legally, I am not even close to being in favor of it. I am a 2nd Amendment person but not in favor of stupid laws.
I’ve heard that argument for years, and you know what? All those fears you mention simply don’t happen as a result of permitless carry. Partly because those bad guys you mention either change their ways, move to someplace where people are not armed, or they get dead. I can’t change your opinion and won’t even try to. But, I will ask you to not try to change my opinion, or that of others who support permitless carry.
Have a nice life. 🙂
Spot on.
Then I guess, Frank, the only laws we need are ones that disarm bad people because other laws punishing bad behavior with firearms are ill-relevant.
Or to put it a different way do you think all those bad actors won’t or can’t carry a gun now anyway?
The difference is law abiding people can and should be allowed to carry a firearm for self defense. Right now that’s either difficult or impossible without becoming “gun criminals” as a result. They are all disarmed and we know what happens to disarmed populaces.
The other thing that happens often in those cases that those “undesirables” are already carrying. No one knows about it until the next crime is committed. If they never commit another crime, then I would consider them reformed and should be eligible to keep and bear.
As said in an earlier comment, constitutional carry already works really well for criminals. Permits are solely for the law-abiding.
A big part of the problem you are talking about is that penalties for the crimes they are committing are not severe enough. When prison as in many cases now is basically a holiday camp and life is easier inside than out in the real world (no work, TV, gym, free medicine etc etc) then of course criminals wont give a damn about going to jail. Also some of the things you mention (pot heads for example) if you take away the laws criminalizing them for merely having it in their possession and using it 99% of them are no problem at all. Harder drugs like Heroin, Cocaine, etc do cause violent behavior however but again some of the laws make the situation worse. Add to this the bleeding hearts that “Oh, but they were abused by their alcoholic father blah blah blah and cant be held responsible”…. NO everyone must be held responsible and the max penalty applied for any ACTUAL crime meaning any crime that has a victim. If there is no victim there is no crime. Again this is also part of the problem. Too many laws against things that have no victim and are of little consequence have jail time attached to them. This also tends to create an environment where people start to disregard the law in whole because there are so many laws they cant know them all and so unwittingly end up breaking some law that they knew nothing about. That is not law and order, it is LAWFARE against the citizenry. Keep the laws basic with harsh penalties for breaking those few laws that do have a victim and most people will keep within the law.
Also i strongly believe that once jail time has been served ALL rights of a citizen must be restored and that includes RTKBA. If however they get out and commit another crime straight back in for double the max sentence for the crime and if that means they would die in jail then it becomes the death penalty.
Doing things like having permits to carry are simply removing what is a right (the right to self defense) and then returning them to you as a privilege with a tax attached to it that they can jack up any time they choose.
So do you want liberty or do you want a police state (dictatorship)?
Take note of the demographics in Vermont as one of many reasons their crime rate is so low. Not many people live there and they are alike in most ways.
While those 15 states are relaxing gun rules, another dozen states are increasing their infringements on the 2nd-Amendment rights of citizens. In states like New Jersey, New York, and California, state and local governments are constantly dreaming up more and more ways to inconvenience, harass, tax, regulate, and add fees to law-abiding gun owners to the point where law-abiding citizens give up attempting to become a gun owner out of frustration with all the paperwork, expense, and time consuming red tape necessary to buy a gun or even a single round of ammunition! These governments considers it a feature, not a bug, when law-abiding citizens no longer want to jump through the hoops necessary to be a gun owner, because these laws are intended to discourage gun ownership.
Take New Jersey (please!), where out Governor Phil Murphy held a gun control “roundtable” yesterday in which only anti-gun people were invited. He proudly wore a bright red “F” pin on his lapel, bragging about his F-rating with the NRA (and maybe also as an “F-you!” to citizens), and proposed new and redundant laws to harass law-abiding gun owners, including permits to buy ammunition and forcing stores to keep a registry of each box of ammunition sold, which they already have to do for handgun ammo, but they want to extend it to all ammo). Murphy just passed a slew of anti-freedom laws last year (including a new ban on 11-15 round magazines with NO GRANDFATHER CLAUSE that caused great expense for law-abiding gun owners to come into compliance — but didn’t affect criminals at all, because criminals don’t obey laws).
New York, New Jersey, and California are actively competing for the nation’s STUPIDEST gun laws (which of course their governors, in Orwellian language label as “smart” gun laws). And some of these clowns want to run for President (including Andrew Cuomo and Michael Bloomberg), so don’t dismiss them as a local or regional problem that only coastal residents have to deal with! Our next President could be one of these clowns. Andrew Cuomo (the one who passed the nation’s stupidest gun law, the NY SAFE Act) is so ignorant about guns that just last year, during an interview, he said that semi-automatic rifles are machine guns, that they continue firing as long as you hold down the trigger. The reporter corrected him, but Cuomo didn’t seem to believe the reporter! Cuomo said semi-automatic handguns only fire one shot per trigger pull, but semi-automatic RIFLES continue firing until the magazine is empty (30-clip rounds per second, LOL), that’s how dumb and ignorant he is.
I know, I’m preaching to the choir here, but someone needs to teach Democrats, so they don’t nominate someone this stupid as the next DNC nominee for President. That reporter tried to educate Cuomo, but I don’t think it sunk in.
Someone needs to teach POTG what the hell “shall not be infringed” means. Our own division on that will sink us.
BOTTOM LINE : DEMOCRATS WANT YOUR GUNS……
And some Republicans, Libertarians, libertarians, greens, etc.. and a whole lot of POTG.
It sounds like the 2nd amendment is being read “a haphazard distribution of arms, being necessary…” the way I read the constitution the state has a DUTY to promote the “well regulated” aspect of the 2nd amendment. After all an “ignorant and undisciplined militia” would likely be detrimental to a safe an free state. These states have abandoned that duty. I grew up in Texas, I learned that guns aren’t toys and I used to be proud that in Texas you had to participate with society to exercise that right. No sense of responsibility is left in the laws, just entitlement.
I am so angry. I worked in a level iii trauma center and we would get gunshot wounds on a weekly sometimes daily basis. Only once was the person shot in defense of self(actually property) Most were people injured by their own weapons.