From day one, I’ve always seen licensed concealed carry and licensed open carry as steps toward unlicensed carry.....or Constitutional Carry, as some call it.
We talk about legislative intent in this forum occasionally, and we bemoan legislators and judges who reinterpret the law in a different manner from the way the legislature intended that law when they wrote it......and rightly so. Those deviations are
perversions of the original legislative intent.
That same discernment should be applied to the words of the Constitution. It is very clear to anyone who has read contemporaneously written supporting documents such as the Federalist Papers and other writings of the founders that: (A) the 2nd Amendment was written with the intent to describe an individual right (not a “permission”); and that (B) they added the specific wording “shall not be infringed”
BECAUSE they knew that gov’t would eventually get around to trying to infringe upon it. Additionally, there were other protections in the Constitution existing within the Bill of Rights which apply to the right to keep and bear arms, to whit, Article V:
Article [V] (Amendment 5 - Rights of Persons)
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
So let’s get it out of the way right here and now, the Founders never intended the 2nd Amendment to be applied in any way except the most (small “L”) libertarian interpretation, and they required due process
FOR THE PERSON before he/she could have their individual right to keep and bear arms infringed in any way. THAT was the founder’s INTENT. This is how we rationalize the abrogation of rights for convicted felons.
But we are NOT convicted felons, and EVERY single little restriction on the right to keep and bear arms since then has been in opposition to the Founders’ intent for the 2nd Amendment - whether enacted legislatively, by SCOTUS decision, or executive fiat. When you agree
philosophically with the requirement of a license in order to exercise one’s 2nd Amendment rights - whether the state is offering tiered levels or not - you are accepting the proposition that the 2nd Amendment is a permission, and not a right.
Now, I have agreed to obtain a license so that the state will not put me in prison for exercising my right to keep and bear arms, but I do NOT agree with the proposition that a license ought to be required, because the requirement is an infringement. How so? Try and get a license if you owe the state unpaid taxes. There are plenty of legitimate possible reasons for why those taxes have not paid yet.....like maybe you are contesting them, and a decision has not yet been reached.....but the fact that you are exercising your right to petition gov’t regarding your taxes should NOT be a disqualifier to freely exercise your right to keep and bear arms. Until you’ve been convicted of a disqualifying tax evasion charge through due process of law, the state should not be restricting your right to carry a firearm.
Now, the fact that license holders as a class have a better track record of lawful behavior than law enforcement is a good thing, but if that is the case, then why do we have more restriction on where we can carry than any LEO has? The explanation goes back to gov’t at all levels believing that the state grants a RKBA permission rather than the RKBA being a human right we all have simply because breath air. Furthermore, the state believes that LEOs, as agents of the state, are more trustworthy than the citizens they rule over,
even though the statistics do not support that notion when it comes to license holders. The statist belief in the power of gov’t over the people, instead of the power of the people over their gov’t is in full display.
So, for the purposes of the poll:
- I picked Constitutional Carry. That is what I firmly believe, based on their own words and writings, to be the Founder’s intent. Every gov’t restriction on that right without due process for the individual citizen is a perversion of liberty.
- I went ahead and got my license anyway so that the state would not have a reason to jail me for exercising my right - in the same way that I buy motor vehicle insurance to avoid getting tickets for being uninsured while exercising my right to use the roads that my taxes helped to pay for. I do it, but I do it under protest, just to stay out of trouble with the law. And, in the same way that I have never given anyone reason to doubt my trustworthiness as a citizen by behaving unlawfully in Texas with a firearm, but the state still requires me to have a license to carry one, I also have an excellent driving record in Texas....but the state still requires me to maintain a driver’s license. So the state obviously considers the RKBA to be a privilege, which it may infringe as it sees fit. I see it as a long term fight that will be won in steps. We got licensed concealed carry. Then we got some expansions on that. Then we got licensed open carry AND campus carry, and there will be expansions on those - including the eventual broadening of the places we can lawfully carry......for ALL of us, not just an elite few.
- I would be very much opposed to creating an “elite” class of license holders for several reasons. For one, we should not allow ourselves to be pigeon-holed, labeled, and culturally divided by the state. For another, anyone who claims full support for the “uninfringed” RKBA, and yet also believes that license holders ought to be segregated out by skill level according to where they may or may not go, is a flaming hypocrite. Figure out what side of the fence you sit on, but get the heck off the fence. If you have an elitist view of the RKBA, then get off the fence and just admit you’re an elitist, and stop denying it. OR, conversely, get off the fence and give an impassioned defense of the free exercise of the 2nd Amendment right as an individual right - AS THE FOUNDERS INTENDED. But quit fiddle-faddeling around.
- Not everybody can afford to take additional training classes and pay additional licensing fees. And still others may be physicially unable to take and pass higher level training classes. Certainly this becomes a bigger issue for the elderly. If you’re an elitist, are you telling me that a grandpa should have less right to carry his firearm into a classroom (as an example of a prohibited place where police can carry) to talk to his grandkid’s class about his military experience, or his career field, than a “super-license” holder - just because the former is more frail and less fit than the latter? That’s ageist! Should the poor be barred from obtaining super licenses because the requirements are out of their reach?
The requirement to have a license to carry if you want the “free” exercise of your RKBA is a fact of life, so get the license in order to stay out of trouble, but NEVER support any licensing scheme which creates separate classes of licensees, further subdiving the right into a series of permissions in which the state gets to decide who the winners and losers are.
Remember, the goal is the FREE exercise of your rights, not submission to additional requirements for additional permissions, in order to exercise a right which the founders intended should be uninfringed. It is always a good thing to get training if you are capable of taking it, and can afford any costs associated with it. But the human right to keep and bear arms must never be subject to physical or economic limitations, because if you accept a tiered system, then you accept that not all Americans are equal before the law. This is what people like Hillary Clinton and Obama believe. They believe that not all of us should be equal before the law, because they do not believe in the rule of law......they believe in the rule of men. If you support a
mandated tiered licensing system in order to expand your permissions, then you are joining the ranks of those who believe in the rule of men over the rule of law, and who do NOT believe in equality before the law for individual citizens.
same here. I think there would be a great opportunity to bring this topic to a larger asudience and see where it goes.
