Gun Rights' Quiet March

A few days ago, Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama signed a law that eliminated permit requirements for carrying a concealed firearm in public. Alabama is now the 22nd state to enact what has come to be known as "Constitutional carry" legislation (that goes into effect January 1, 2023).

This is another milestone in the gun rights movement that has, rather quietly, been marching on for the past half century. A milestone in more ways than one: Not only do we have another state embrace the Second Amendment the way the Founders intended, but now (well, in a few months) there are more Americans living under Constitutional carry rules (88.8M) than living under the restrictive "may-issue" rules (84.3M) that remain in 8 states.

For the uninitiated, state-level concealed carry laws sort into four categories: no-issue, may-issue, shall-issue, and Constitutional carry. No-issue is rather obvious, but the key difference to be aware of is may-issue vs shall-issue. Under a may-issue rule set, a citizen can apply for a Carry a Concealed Weapon (CCW) permit, but approval was at the government's discretion. In other words, they could say "no," even if you'd never done anything wrong. In places like New York, you had to prove a special reason you should get one, not just "I want it for self-defense." Shall-issue, on the other hand, flips the script, and puts the burden on the government to show just cause for denying you a CCW permit. So, any citizen who wants one and isn't disqualified by something like a felony conviction or an order of protection against must be issued a CCW. Constitutional carry, as already discussed, means no permit required (though if you are a disqualified person, such as a convicted felon, and are caught with a firearm, you still get to go to jail).

As recently as 1980, almost all the nation's states had either a no-issue or may-issue doctrine, with only Vermont standing out as a Constitutional Carry state. In 1980, Indiana passed shall-issue legislation, modeled on a legislative effort that started in Georgia in 1976. Three other states followed Indiana's lead in the mid 80s, but it was Florida's change from may-issue to shall-issue that brought national attention to the movement.

The usual suspects caterwauled, gnashed teeth, and warned of a homicidal apocalypse in the Sunshine State and home of Florida Man. Didn't happen. A hundred thousand CCW permits were issued in short order, but, to the surprise of the aforementioned harpies and Chicken Littles, Florida's homicide rates from 36% above the national average to 4% below within a few years. The arm-ageddon, like most doomsday predictions, failed to materialize.

Across the ensuing decades, shall-issue laws proliferated, and today 42 of the 50 states have shall-issue... or better.

Enter the Constitutional carry movement. Also known as unrestricted carry, the first entry apart from the forever-Constitutional Vermont in the Constitutional Carry parade was Alaska in 2003. Arizona followed suit in 2010, and 20 more states jumped on the bandwagon across the next dozen years. It's probably no coincidence that the Supreme Court affirmed, in 2008's Heller v D.C., that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms.

Today, in fully three-quarters of the US population, across 42 states and the District of Columbia, a person not otherwise disqualified has the right to carry a firearm (whether by shall-issue CCW or unrestricted carry). That figure may reach 100% this summer, when the Court issues its ruling in NYSRPA v Bruen, a case that strikes at the very heart of the may-issue doctrine.

The Ukrainians' resistance to the Russian invasion is a crystal-clear affirmation of the Founders' intent in writing the Second Amendment. That the citizenry there had to be armed by the government is a mistake that's precluded by a proper reading of 2A, and the steady march of states removing obstacles to CCW moves us closer and closer to how things should be.

The number of guns in private hands in America exceeds 400 million, and has grown ten-fold[7 since World War II. Concurrently with the shall-issue and Constitutional Carry movements, violent crime rates in America have declined precipitously.

While correlation is not causation, this and the lack of any statistical link between gun ownership and murder or mass shooting rates make it abundantly clear that law-abiding gun ownership is not a threat to public safety.

Again, cue the gnashing of teeth, because some people feel they are entitled to deny others' rights, facts and precepts of liberty notwithstanding.

The joke's on them, of course. Across the country and through the Court, our gun rights are being restored more and more with each passing year. People continue to buy guns, as both the crowd I witnessed at a recent gun show in upstate NY and the data on NICS background checks affirm.

America's gun culture is getting stronger, no matter the Left's (and the Democrats') desire to quash it. With the pending Supreme Court decision, several states looking to move from shall-issue to Constitutional carry, and the Ukraine's example of how an armed nation can stand against tyranny, the anti-gun-rights minority is seeing its dreams of disarmament withering away.

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Peter