As a licensed Kansas CCW holder, I was and am appalled at this law.
Why? I’m not convinced about constitutional carry but I don’t have a problem with it per se. Kansas becomes the 6th state in the union to enact it. Now you can say that more than 10% of the states are constitutional carry.
The battle over shall issue has essentially been won. In every state that it’s realisticly possible to pass those laws they have done so and 40+ states are now shall issue or constitutional carry. The new battle will be constitutional carry. I hope in a couple decades we can look back as we now do at the shall issue movement and see that constitutional carry is how it should have been all along.
What the hell is “constitutional carry”?
Who has killed more people; Americans or Hitler?
It’s not really a question, more a different viewpoint on your reply. The ‘back then’ response is justified in the Wild West, but totally not with the Holocaust. Rightly so in the latter, but considered ‘a part of life’ in the former.
Okay, Hitler’s killing was racist, bigoted, an extermination of a people - wrong on many levels, evil, nasty, corrupt, inhuman, and we rightly cast a very negative light on all of what happened back then. The news is often about white or black people killing black people, brown people killing brown people and I see (not on here) comments about how ISIS, Saudi, Iran and Syria should be nuked from orbit. Crazy. Like the Third Reich were crazy.
The USA has killed maybe 30 or 40 million people since 1945, not as bad as Mao or Pol Pot and was/is supported by most or all of its allies, but a huge figure. The Right to Bare Arms is a part of American culture - I appreciate that and support you guys. But (you know there was a ‘but’ coming) going to other countries to exterminate people is different. ‘Supporting Our Soldiers (State-Sponsored Murderers)’ - come on! What the fuck is that all about?
Can you explain, in little words, just why the ability to conceal a personal weapon without informing the guvmint is such a quintessential “conservative value”? Is it just that the guvmint is compiling lists so they can vaccinate gunowners’ children with autism? Why in particular, do law-abiding carriers need or want concealed carry anyway? Is it primarly so they can pass for responsible while ready to inflict vengeance?
I hope to get more intelligible answers than when I asked the same question about law-abiding citizens wanting silencers (“Some people want silencers because they want silencers, duh!!”) but I’m not holding my breath.
You can carry a flintlock musket as long as it’s for militia use.
100 days into 2015 and at least 300 people have been killed by police so far, with January 10 (probably) the only day so far without one:
WTF did anything I said have to do with American military intervention post-WW2?
That’s the tone the Salon article took: snarkily lumping Constitutional Carry in with tax cuts, anti-abortion laws and repealing LGBT protections. Take it up with Luke Brinker, Salon’s politics editor.
I’m sure there are lots and lots of intelligent responsible progressive-thinking Americans who own guns and favor gun rights.
BUT, although the correlation coefficient isn’t unity, there is HUGE correlation between gun-toters and homophobes, racists, tax ignoramuses and all the other 'ists and 'amuses that have reduced today’s American politics to a sick joke.
Do you deny that?
No, and I think I misunderstood your previous question. Why is there a correlation between firearms and other [del]reactionary[/del] conservative positions? I think mainly it boils down to “Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do?” (With banning abortion the major exception).
I do not believe anyone should carry a gun on a regular basis, concealed or not, without training or proof of training. IMO “constitutional carry” will lead to some carrying daily and being careless with their gun. By eliminating the training requirement I believe there is a significant probability of greater accidents and incidents.
I base this purely upon my observation of human behavior, and how utterly careless and stupid the average person can be. The bar to get a CCW permit in Kansas was not trivial, but it was low enough that any responsible person could do so.
Perhaps the relationship of carrying and training should be inverted: instead of saying you can’t carry unless you’ve gotten training, maybe a state could say that you must get training if you carry. It could be legally considered the modern equivalent of the militia muster requirement, a citizenship duty like jury duty. Technically it wouldn’t infringe on anyone’s right to carry but scofflaws could face misdemeanor penalties for not doing the mandated drill.
Okay, but it raises the point; how many civil gun crimes are committed/caused by ex-servicemen with serious PTSD? Or the children of them? Or their nearest and dearest? Or the children or friends (or gang) of those killed?
And the fetishism of War - America being called a ‘War Machine’ - along with shoot 'em up games and hip hop sensationalizing gun culture, a whole genre of Hollywood movies sensationalizing war - note the dates when Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down and others came out.
Don’t get me wrong; I love firing a weapon in a range. A very secure, safe place, and I drive safely but needed training and testing before being able to operate a potentially lethal weapon.
That is all a gun is! A weapon, at least a car’s primary and sole reason d’etre is not to kill or injury people.
This is a similar concern that was raised during the shall issue movement. None of these widespread negative impacts have been realized. There are of course isolated incidents of great levels of stupidity and malice but on balance the predictions of detractors have not come to pass. Before Kansas, 5 other states have been constitutional carry and it has worked fine. Check out this animated gif that shows how things have progressed over time from 1986 to now. I’d like to see the whole thing green.
Of course it is, it has the same general politics and editorial slant as The Nation, Mother Jones, In These Times and AlterNet.
I don’t assert that it has been a problem. I opine that the responsibility of carrying a firearm implies a due diligence to understand its safe operation, storage, handling, and use. Perhaps it’s being an engineer, but I’m fairly used to training requirements for using machines or tools. A gun is simply a machine - it’s not magical, it’s not evil, it’s a machine. When misused, it can cause injury or death. No banning, no registration, just training in the general safe life around guns.
Una, my sense is that up until just a few years ago, your position used to be the prevailing view of gun advocates. One of healthy respect and responsibility. The idea of unfettered access was kind of fringe. Now the prevailing view seems much different.
Am I mistaken in that?
Y’know, the NRA is not essentially a politically conservative or RW organization. A Communist can be just as good a member as any other. Does none of the membership object that LaPierre is going way, way beyond gun-rights politics here?
That was what the NRA was all about, once upon a time. It even used to endorse gun-control legislation.