Concealed Carry of Weapons Superior To Taking Weapons.
It’s good to see the right kind of bill moving through Congress.
U.S. Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) has introduced S. 388 – the equivalent of H.R. 226 – which is a national Right-To-Carry bill for reciprocity for state carry licensees for concealed weapons. In short, any person with a valid concealed carry permit issued by a state would be recognized to legally carry in any other state. The bill would require states to officially recognize each other’s carry permits just like nationwide recognition of your driver’s license.
Imagine: carrying your concealed weapon wherever you travel.
Because law enforcement derives its authority from the people, and for other compelling reasons, I’d like to suggest that citizens be recognized to carry wherever police can be summoned, including churches, schools, public buildings, airports and civil aircraft. Any exclusion of this is..well, exclusionary and unreasonable. There can be no such thing as restrictions on places where citizens may carry, yet police may when police operate on the authority given them by the people.
The Houston Chronicle, January 27, 2007, reports that nearly 260,000 persons in Texas alone legally carry concealed weapons. Large numbers are not unusual. Alaska and Vermont don’t even require a permit to carry a concealed handgun, and hundreds of thousands more nationwide carry their weapons legally. Some of your neighbors may have a CCW permit you aren’t aware of.
Why not?
Because these individuals are not troublemakers, and they don’t usually shoot their mouths off about it. The strategic strength of concealed carry is, after all, that the criminals don’t know who’s carrying, and therefore who to strike. Good Heavens: someone might fight back! [In Texas, as the Chronicle reports, many of the individuals licensed to carry are over sixty years old.]
And it’s perfectly reasonable and legal that people should not be restricted as to where they carry.
This rationale is significant in that crime is reduced non-violently by someone in authority – namely, the average reasonable person – and if the weapon must be drawn, it’s drawn by someone trained, someone who believes they are facing immediate grave danger, someone who may be able to keep the aggression from escalating.
That’s what we all want, isn’t it? Less criminal violence?
Incidentally, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report shows that even though there are about 47,000 shooting deaths annually – mostly crime-on-crime – there are more than 2.5 million incidents of average Joe and Josephine Citizen using their gun to stop a crime, based on reports handed in to the FBI by law enforcement nationwide.
Which do you prefer?
And remember that when President Bush signed into law the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act of 2004, which made nationwide concealed carry possible for retired police officers – emphasis on retired – he didn’t put more cops on the street, he put more private, armed citizens on the street. Tons of them. Former police – qualified retired law enforcement officer, according to the Act, yes - but now armed private citizens.
What makes you think that only police have the authority to stop grave danger? Gun control steps on citizen authority without any legal authority to do so.
Don’t forget that anti-gun legislation doesn’t prevent anything, but an armed citizen can prevent aggression from escalating, and one has a right and authority to do that. Gun control prevents nothing, but an armed citizen can de-escalate nearly every grave danger faced. Think it through.
Nationwide concealed carry is right. In S. 388, the individual citizen is respected as an average reasonable person, not to mention it’s the law of the land. To confiscate weapons for any reason whatsoever or to demand that individuals show cause to carry one or to be restricted in what or where they can carry is an example of interference with legitimate authority, and the contention itself is suspicious.
Because violence is the theoretical basis for so many counter-intuitive social programs, the recognition of the authority of the average citizen could be very, very good for the country.
The very best to Senator Thune with his national recognition bill, S. 388. Thank you very much for your service, Senator.
It is time for nationwide concealed carry, because in a nation of laws, it’s always time for personal liberty and personal authority.
_______________________
Gun control is not merely another opinion: disarmament is a trap for the American household. See www.TransferOfWealth.net
Â
Â
Â
| More from John Longenecker
Stumble It!
January 28th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
>”…Alaska and Vermont don’t even require a permit to carry a concealed handgun…”
I wonder what this legislation stipulates as to how persons from these two states will be treated if discovered with a gun in another state.
1. Will they be allowed to carry because the state they are from doesn’t require a concealed carry permit?
2. If not, will they have to get a permit from another state? From the federal government?
3. Would getting a concealed carry permit from another state be possible if people don’t live in the state issuing the permit?
4. Will Alaska and Vermont have to start issuing permits even though they’re not required?
January 28th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Interesting points, Dittohd. I’d love to see Alaskans roam without the need for anypermit anywhere because the hosting state is required to recognize not just a permit, but the visiting state’s law. That is to say, assuming that’s included.
Interesting question.
January 28th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
I hope that goes through. I have a CCW from Colorado, but have to detour around Kansas and Nebraska when I travel. I only live 30 miles from Nebraska, and even though they have a new CCW law, they don’t recognise Colorado CCW permits. It’s a major pain in the behind, because I go over to Sidney, to Cabela’s, frequently to get shooting and hunting supplies.
January 28th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Very dangerous legislation. It would thusly turn our RIGHT into a privilege – just like a Driver’s License. We ALREADY have a National Right to Carry Bill;
“THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED”.
It is our God-given Natural Right – No ‘permit’ required. http://gunshowonthenet.com/2ALaw/LawsofNature.html
And Jefferson seems to heartily endorse this sentiment;
“…It is well worthy of publication for the instruction of our citizens, being profound, sound, and short. Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights* and duties, and to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him; every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him; and, no man having a natural right to be the judge between himself and another, it is his natural duty to submit to the umpirage of an impartial third. When the laws have declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled their functions, and the idea is quite unfounded, that on entering into society we give up any natural right…” – Thomas Jefferson, June 7, 1816 letter to Francis W. Gilmer.
http://gunshowonthenet.com/AfterTheFact/JeffersonToGilmer1816.html
January 29th, 2007 at 7:59 am
[...] Read this story by John Longenecker at mensNEWSdaily. [...]
January 30th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
EdavidG762: “Very dangerous legislation. It would thusly turn our RIGHT into a privilege”
It is that type of “purist” foolishness that makes the anti-gun forces win when they do win – and win they did since about 1934 (probably earlier, since the NY Sullivan law).
Hey, Dave, no disrespect intended, but you have to start learning how to deal with the Marxist political foe. No reciting and pasting of quotes will do. Sometimes, pragmatism has to be applied instead of well-meant but otherwise misguided purist slogans.
The Marxists have been working a piece at a time, dismantling the 2nd Amendment. It would be nice to make it all go away by reciting one line, but what it has taken so far to counter their evil handiworks is the piecemeal effort, state-by-state, to pass Concealed Carry. Now, every time, each of those 38 states was about to pass CCW, I heard the people like yourself saying that this is a dangerous legislation, turning rights into privileges, ‘cuz you should not need a permit to exercise a right, and reciting the 2nd Amendment as “the National Right to Carry Bill.” (That is true; it is also irrelevant.)
Pragmatism works; we cannot afford the luxury of hopes that are unachievable. If working piecemeal will get me there, then I’ll take that route.
If I were waiting for the ultimate, comprehensive, and purist solution, I would still be without CCW. Many lives have been saved with the passage of the CCW, and extending this trend further with the legislation proposed is the right thing to do. Waiting and fretting and losing decent human lives — people who cannot carry while in travel out-of-state — is not my idea of advancing the 2nd Amendment.
Regards.
January 31st, 2007 at 8:19 am
I agree with eholtzman. As Voltaire said, “the best is the enemy of the good”. I truly sympathise with EDavidg762, but I don’t understand the objection to the bill. It is a federal law fighting back state infringement of our God-given, second-amendment-protected rights. (And yes, the second amendment does restrict state action. The 14th amendment says so.) There are many federal infringements of our rights, but S.388 will not add to the pile.
In partial response to Dittohd, though Alaska does not require a permit to carry, the state has wisely created a permit program for residents who want to carry in other states through reciprocity. I pray for the day when my home state of Virginia regains similar wisdom and grace.
January 31st, 2007 at 10:28 am
Let me add this, Guys: we didn’t get this way overnight, but politically. That’s two parameters: time and route.
Thus, we have to go with the political route for now and we have to know thatit’s going to take time.
Howver let me emphasize this: though a law today, it will be rightful and no need for a law tomorrow, or someday.
Today, I believe there is no such thing as an illegal gun and no such thing as sensible gun laws. For now, it will take a political solution and patience: we go through due process and follow-through.
Then, someday, there will be no such thing as a gun law.
See my next piece coming out, Part II.
J