What would happen if every red-blooded American above the age of 21 went walking around with a gun? Right now there are somewhere above 14 million men and women who are licensed to carry a concealed weapon, and since there are roughly 70 million between the ages of 21 and 65 living in a home with at least one gun, let’s say that the number of gun -carrying adults jumped from the current 14 million to 40 million; in other words, one out of every two.
If this were happen, first and foremost the gun industry would recover from the doldrums it has been experiencing since the election of Sleazy Don Trump. Funny, isn’t it? We finally elect a President who endorses concealed-carry and the gun industry collapses like a wet suit on the golf course; it’s in the dumps. If the Democrats make the mistake of running fat-ass Hillary in 2020 again, Sleazy Don will stay in the Oval Office until 2024 and the gun business will wither and die.
Let’s pretend for the moment that the Clintons finally shut up and go away, the blue team nominates a serious candidate (sorry, but my friend Deval Patrick ain’t no Obama on The Bomber’s worst day) and both the Senate and the House seat a majority who aren’t red. The new President is inaugurated in 2025, the gun-control gang demands its much-deserved payoff, and another semi-useless gun law actually gets into the Federal code
Could it happen? I’m not quite ready to take the short odds, but this scenario doesn’t immediately fail the plausibility or possibility test. And if it does happen, we might easily end up with 40 million or more Americans who can wander around with a handgun stuck in their pocketbook or their pants.
Bear in mind, of course, that we do not have any real idea of how many people legally able to carry a concealed Glock or Sig are actually walking around with a gun. I asked a number of people who had gotten their concealed-carry permit(CCW) after they had taken the safety course I teach whether or not they were carrying a gun on a regular basis, and the ratio of CCW license-holders to gun-carriers was on the order of ten to one. After the immediate thrill of playing Bruce Willis or John Wick wears off, walking around with a gun, unless you’re paid to walk around with a gun, is a real pain in the ass. Sooner or later you’ll forget it, or you’ll drop it, or in some other way you’ll do something stupid or careless and God forbid what you do causes the gun to go off.
Despite what my Gun-control Nation friends believe, the idea that people with legal concealed-carry privileges are a threat to others or themselves is simply not true. In the last 12 years, CCW-holders shot and killed 1,200 people, of which 550 happened to be the CCW -holders themselves. Which means that, on average, people who walk around with a legal handgun fatally injure 55 other people every year. That’s 4/10ths of 1 percent of yearly gun homicides. This makes CCW-holders a threat to community safety and peace?
The biggest joke of all is the opposition to national concealed-carry law by various office-holders from blue states (ex: Schumer – NY) who say they don’t want gun-toters coming into their state from another state where CCW licenses are simply given away, as opposed to more restrictive states (like New York) which require more detailed vetting and a safety course before CCW is approved.
Is Schumer serious? Does he think that the Sheriff in New York State’s Chenango County gives one rat’s damn about a more detailed background check or what’s being taught in the so-called ‘safety’ course? Chenango County has about as many people living in it as live in the same square city block in Manhattan where Schumer lives.
Want to get serious about reducing gun violence? Stop going after straw men like CCW and do something about the guns.
And while you’re at it: https://www.facebook.com/nostinkingun/.
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Dec 05, 2018 @ 13:53:57
A couple years ago one of the Moms Who Are Demanding Action in these parts wrote a terrifying editorial about the rivers of blood and shot spouses who would result from a national concealed carry law. I responded with my own editorial, noting that New Mexico has reciprocity with 24 states, most of whom have fewer requirements for a CHL than we do.
No one took me up on my offer to identify any cross-border “concealed carry killers”. As I said in that letter, our gun violence perps are home grown and are generally already legally precluded from packing heat, visible or otherwise. The national reciprocity panic on the Left is entirely manufactured. Perhaps a national standard somewhere between Constitutional Carry and the Democratic People’s Republic of California Standard would actually be a good idea if we could use it to control who could purchase and carry what.
Dec 05, 2018 @ 15:58:17
Where I live, it is very easy to get arrested for a gun having crime if the authorities don’t like you. With a valid, current chl, not so much.
A safe haven, in other words.
Whenever you can get one of those, my advice is to grab it with both hands.
Dec 05, 2018 @ 23:46:23
I got mine for two reasons. One, since I could. two, so I wouldn’t have to worry about Law Enforcement if my bathrobe was accidentally concealing my Beretta.