For longer than anyone reading this has been alive, the state of Vermont has allowed its citizens and its visitors to carry loaded, concealed handguns in public with no permit required. The Michael Bloombergs of the world fear that such a practice will make the proverbial blood run in the streets…but history has shown us the reverse. Every year, Vermont is one of the LOWEST violent crime states in the nation. In recent years Alaska and then Arizona adopted the same thing. So did Wyoming, though that state limited permitless carry to Wyoming residents. Whaddaya know: rivers of blood haven’t swept through any of their streets, either. I’m happy with these results: an old New Englander, I believe “if I ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Allowing good people to carry guns without permits, and merely forbidding convicted criminals, adjudicated mentally incompetent people, and others to do it, has worked out surprisingly well.
One suggestion, though. Many on the gun owners’ civil rights side have come to call this “Constitutional Carry.” Having been in a lot of different kinds of fights over the years, I’ve learned not to give advantages to my opponents, or leave openings through which they can hurt me. I believe referring to lawful permitless carry as “Constitutional Carry” gives the prohibitionists such an opportunity.
Why? Any fifteen-year-old kid taking high school Civics 101 knows that the arbiter of Constitutional law in this country is the Supreme Court of the United States. In two recent decisions which are landmark victories for our side – Heller v. District of Columbia and McDonald, et. al. v. Chicago – SCOTUS has confirmed that the right to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights is indeed an individual right. However, both of those decisions have also made it clear that the states have the right to regulate the practice.
Which means that while the right to keep and bear arms is indeed Constitutional, to be technically correct the right to carry without a permit in the above-named states flows from the wise majority in their state legislatures, and not directly from the Second Amendment.
Words mean things. If we use the wrong terms, we compromise our credibility, and our factual credibility is our strongest weapon in this polarized debate. That’s why I for one do not describe permitless carry as “Constitutional carry.”
If we need a term with a catchy ring to it, we can simply invoke the peaceful valleys of the Green Mountain State and very appropriately call it … “the Vermont Model.”
While reading your response to Dennis, “Hey, at least I’m honest about using different names. I didn’t have to admit it. Truth is ugly, lies are beautiful, but I like the truth anyway.”, I am thinking that if you feel the “Truth is ugly”, and “lies are beautiful”, then you must be a Democrat.
Fortuantely, since you also like “Fun”, you must be a “Happy Democrat”, you are not a danger to the rest of us, at the moment.
But, since a “Happy Democrat” is a rarity among Democrats, the likelyhood of your becoming a “Disgruntled Democrat”, who have caused all the death and horrors, in America recently, I sincerely hope that you will also be able to realize when the point of change between Happy, and Disgruntled, is about to take place, and turn in all of your firearms, in advance of this crsis point, so that you not become just another example of the typical “Disgrunteld Democrat, who goes out and Murders people at will, as so many of your fellow disgruntled Democrats have in the past?
Greg Tag,
I believe the names we use here are not as important as what we say here. I used the same name for each of Massad’s blogs and I did not change my persona, even when I used female names. Nevertheless, to avoid the appearance of impropriety, I will heed your request, choose a name and stay consistent with it here on out. Let’s see, I think I will choose to stay with the second name I used, Old Fezzywig.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
Hey Mas!
I think the term constitutional carry is technically correct for vermont,
because of the Vermont Supreme Court in 1903 in State v Rosenthal where a conviction for carrying a concealed weapon was called “repugnant to the constitution of this state” by the VT supreme court.
so as far as the constitution of vermont is concerned, constitutional carry is an accurate term because the courts in vermont have based no restrictions on constitutional grounds, versus AZ, AK, and WY where the right is statutory.
It is true that the use of the term “Constitutional Carry” creates some degree of ambiguity, if not confusion as to just which source is being referenced. The problem becomes one of just what term to use. I suspect that many States would not react favorably to a model named after another State, be it Vermont, Oklahoma or Arizona.
The U.S. Supreme Court does indeed have the final say in determining the meaning of the U.S. Constitution (unless there is a Constitutional Amendment to correct an interpretation deemed incorrect). That does not alway make the court correct, which is a problem in itself. Indeed, the court has all too frequently proven to be a poor historian and on occasion has engaged in rank politics. Be that as it may, that is the way things stand.
In Texas, the State Constitution, a post-reconstruction document which has had several hundred successful amendments to it and hundreds more which were not enacted because it was intended to make governance a difficult proposition. Article 1, Section 23 of the Texas Constitution, as quoted above, explicitly recognizes the right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and empowers only the State Legislature (not cities such as San Antonio) to regulate the wearing thereof with a view to prevent crime. The problem comes when the courts interpret the power to regulate as including the prohibitory power. In Texas, and a number of other States as well, the current prohibitions on the wearing of handguns, either openly or concealed, is directly traceable to the so-called “Jim Crow Codes” of the post-reconstruction era which were intended to be discriminatorily enforced against former slaves and other freedmen of color even though the language of the statute was of general application and eventually came to be uniformly enforced.
Modern day Arizona was once a part of Texas and shares a common legal history. The history diverges with respect to handguns, however. Arizona continues to allow open carry of handguns and there is simply no evidence at all that such practice in any way contributes to crime which is the counter argument to the Texas Legislature’s enactment “with a view to prevent crime”.
Arizona has enacted a system of concealed carry permits as has Texas, though Texas did so rather belatedly. The prohibitions against concealed carry here (Texas) are traceable to the Codes Duello, under which it was not considered gentlemanly to carry concealed as another individual would not know that one was armed and prepared to use force as a remedy to offenses against one’s honor. Though dueling was never as commonplace as imagined, when outlawed it quickly disappeared as a means of dispute resolution. As such, the prohibitions against concealed carry are as antiquated as those against open carry and have no more validity other than as a means of repression of individual rights. There are more than enough laws with which to prosecute individuals who actually do something wrong with arms, be they firearms, knives, or other arms. Texas has outlawed the possession of a “bowie” knife (yes, the legislature did not even capitalize the name of the hero of the Alamo) even thought what constitutes such a knife is undefined in the statute and the courts have variously interpreted it after the fact. All this goes on notwithstanding the fact that no one actually knows what Jim Bowie’s knife, carried in defense of the Alamo, looked like. It simply is not historically documented. One individual was prosecuted for carrying two swords down a street in Austin, Texas. (He told police that he was carrying them in case he needed them.) George Washington carried his sword across several state lines in travel to New York upon the occasion of his inauguration. It appears that he would be arrested in most of those States today.
What “Constitutional Carry” has come to mean in many, though not all, instances is that any individual not prohibited by law from owning a firearm (specifically a handgun) may carry (“wear”) the handgun either openly or concealed without permit from the state. This is coming to include a optional, voluntarily obtained concealed carry permit for purpose of reciprocity while traveling in other States. So just what should this be called. Many State Legislatures have an adverse reaction to proposals named after other States, be it Vermont, Oklahoma, Arkansas or Arizona.
Reciprocity raises the more interesting question under the U.S. Constitution. How is it that a right recognized under the U.S. Constitution is not a Privilege and Immunity of Federal Citizenship wherever the Citizen may travel within the United States of America? There is an old joke about the U.S. Constitution being “void where prohibited by (local) law”, but that is precisely the instance here. So much for the inherent right of self-defense of one’s life.
In the most recent Legislative session in Texas, a rather modest proposal to provide for open carry of handguns by holders of Concealed Handgun Licenses was never even brought to a vote in committee as a consequence of some shenanigans by certain officials, but that is a story for another day.