Gun Rights Dissonance

Biden and the Left are ignoring a decades-long trend.

Just a couple weeks ago, Georgia became the 25th state to enact permitless carry legislation. Also called "Constitutional carry (CC)," the law eliminates a permit requirement for those not otherwise debarred from gun possession (e.g. convicted felons) to carry a firearm in public.

The US is down to only 8 states that retain an arbitrary denial power over those who wish to carry a firearm. 17 states and the District of Columbia are "shall-issue" jurisdictions, where a permit must be issued to an applicant unless the state can show just cause (see: convicted felon) for rejection, and the remaining 25 took the final step toward restoration of Second Amendment rights in removing permit requirements entirely. By the numbers, 36% of the nation's populace live in CC states and 38% live in shall-issue states. Florida and Nebraska are wrangling over that final step, and if both those shall-issue states go CC, the tally will rise to 43%.

That leaves only 26% of us (I live in one of those may-issue states) with our 2A-protected rights arbitrarily infringed. While in some of these jurisdictions it's a formality, and permits are rarely denied, in others they will literally laugh at you unless you can argue some sort of extraordinary 'need.'

This steady march of gun rights didn't happen in a vacuum. Each step required both a state legislature majority and a governor's signature (or a supermajority override), and all those people got elected by the voters. Yet, if you read the mainstream news, you'll hear endless assertions that Americans want more gun control, not less.

That desire for 'more' is certainly true in a smattering of localities, i.e. the deep-blue cities and enclaves that are small and isolated clusters in a large, pro-gun map. Even the map at the fore of this article doesn't truly speak of how geographically concentrated those points are: Most of New York State, by acreage, is "gun country," with only the NYC metro area and possibly a couple other urban loci containing majority-opposition. That NYC’s anti-gun dominance over the legislature has imposed a may-issue doctrine on the rest of the state is an injustice that’s being challenged in the Supreme Court right now.

The trend and tale are obvious: Americans want their gun rights restored. Yet, instead of recognizing this reality, the Democrats, the legacy media (but I repeat myself) and the wonkosphere encapsulating the nation's capital demand, in hyperbolic, histrionic, and hyperventilating terms, that gun rights be restricted at the federal level. Sure, they always mask it with the term "gun violence," as if there's anyone other than criminals who is pro-gun-violence, but what they really mean is imposing more restrictions on the law-abiding.

The latest bugbear is "ghost guns," i.e. home-made/kit-built firearms that lack serial numbers. Cue exaggeration and fear-mongering.

It’s high time for a ghost gun exorcism -- NY Senator Chuck Schumer

And... cue Joe Biden acting alone, emulating his former boss's "pen and phone" power-flexing and end-running the legislative process. Along with nominating people to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE) who have a long history of opposing gun rights. His first nominee, David Chipman, was rejected for being overly anti-gun-rights, and then went to work for a gun control lobby. Undeterred, and ignoring all but those in that anti-gun echo chamber, Biden put forth another anti-gun nominee.

This disconnect between our dominant political party and the national trend is not limited to gun rights. We see it in the culture war, in the obsession with race essentialism, transgender radicalism, Critical Race Theory, speech suppression, behavior coercion, and the rest of the progressive agenda. The Democrats are either ignoring or indifferent to their looming catastrophe in the mid-term elections, and the ankle-biting left wing of the party continues to herd the majority away from the people's actual wants. They’ll continue to peddle “epidemic” language, despite the reality that, even as Americans have been buying guns by the millions every year, and as their rights are systematically being restored, violent crime has been in decline.

The much more likely culprit of the recent “spike” is the anti-policing movement, which has sought to “defund” police departments, turn a blind eye to much crime it considers “petty,” and create a revolving door that puts unrepentant recidivists and career criminals back on the street within hours of arrest.

In a couple months, there'll be a Supreme Court decision on gun rights that may (I stress 'may,' given Roberts' aversion to strong positions on individual rights and landmark rulings) knock down the waning vestiges of the 'may-issue' doctrine in their entirety. The usual suspects, rather than acknowledging that such would be both a principled and popular decision, will sky-scream doomsday predictions, and their apparatchiks will likely resist the ruling as much as they can.

Meanwhile, the Constitutional Carry movement continues. Nebraska, Florida, and North Carolina are currently wrangling with it. South Carolina failed to enact, but I expect they'll try again. A CC bill was introduced in Michigan’s Senate last year. The Louisiana House recently advanced a CC bill, after having one vetoed last year by the (Democratic) governor. I didn't check every state, but I'm sure there are more.

The trend is obvious. Whether our public servants will finally acknowledge it is another matter.

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Peter.