Please cite where the RKBA has increased? And please spare us with posting privileges, they are not rights.
According to
Wiki:
"Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Vermont and Wyoming allow residents to carry a concealed firearm without a permit.These states also allow the open carry of a handgun without a permit." The linked article is well footnoted.
This is contrasted with only Vermont allowing residents to carry a concealed firearm without a permit just a decade ago.
Furthermore, one might argue that the Heller and resultant McDonald (and lower court decisions springing from Heller/McDonald) was positively influenced by the increasing statutory recognition of the right to an effective self-defense. Also, the 5 States that have moved to constitutional carry have done so with ever increasing statutory ability to carry a gun in public. Certainly whatever may have influenced it, Heller and McDonald represent significant wins for RKBA. No longer can the gun grabbers argue that the 2nd amendment only applies to the militia. They are reduced to trying to salvage "reasonable limits" on ownership, possession, and use.
Will anyone deny these significant improvements in RKBA?
While permits are not perfect recognition of rights, they are steps in the correct direction and we have a 30 year history of States moving from bans on effectively carrying guns in public for self-defense, toward permitting the effective public possession of guns with permits, to non-discriminatory issuance of permits, and to permit-free statutory recognition of the RKBA.
Permits have also greatly increased the number of persons who carry firearms, increasing public acceptance, and providing solid evidence that guns in large numbers of private hands does not lead to blood in the streets. The entire nation can point to Utah's nearly 15 year history of protecting teachers and other public school employees in their right (or non-discriminatory permited privilege if you want to engage in unnecessary semantics) to carry firearms on the job. I nearly 15 years of preventing school districts from imposing gun bans or anti-gun employment policies on those with permits we've exactly one incident involving the lawful possession of a gun: exactly one ND resulting in a dead toilet in the teachers' lounge and some minor injury from porcelain shrapnel to the carrier's leg.
Our opponents did not undermine our rights in one fell swoop. They spent the better part of a century on it with limits on machine guns and short barreled shot guns in the 30s, removing shooting from public school and college PE classes in the 60s and 70s, with bans on mail-order and interstate gun purchases in the late 60s, bans on any new machine guns in the late 80s / early 90s, and the low point of the scary looking gun ban in the mid 90s. This all on top of centuries old slave codes and then jim crow laws that targeted blacks but with the civil rights movement were applied to everyone, or at least to everyone not well enough connected to get a discriminatory permit.
In 30 years we've made tremendous progress in both statute, court rules, and public perception. I recall (no I won't go dig up a citation) that in the 80s and prior most gun owners were either hunters or at least had grown up hunting. Today, I believe most gun owners are not hunters but own guns for self-defense and other non-hunting purposes. A couple of decades ago the pro-RKBA community was deeply concerned (and the gun haters rejoicing) that the reduction in hunting, increased urbanization, might be foretelling the end of widespread gun ownership as a cultural aspect of this nation. Today, urban ownership of firearms all but guarantees not only firearms ownership, but the carrying of firearms for defensive purposes as a culturally, judicially, and legally accepted part of our society.
There are relatively few congressional districts left where overt hostility to RKBA doesn't result in a loss. The attacks on our RKBA continue no doubt. But our opponents have had to shift from frontal assaults to backdoor attacks involving mental health, "common sense" background checks, and trying to increase the long list of felonies with their lifetime bans, along with executive actions intended to drive up the cost of ammo or limit imports.
Another 10 years, maybe 20, and I expect our effective ability to legally carry guns for self defense will not longer require nearly the hassles it does today. We will no more "win" this fight than society will ever "win" the debate over the limits of the 1st amendment. But at this point a man can, with modest effort to obtain a couple of permits, legally carry his gun for self defense over the vast majority of the USA. In a growing number of areas, no permit is needed. And in the last few holdouts against any effective self-defense, court decisions are helping to force needed change. Slower than we'd like. But the direction of change is clear.
Do I over-state or mis-state the progress we've made or the current situation vis-a-vie RKBA?
Charles
