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\u2026but history has shown us the reverse.\u00a0 Every year, Vermont is one of the LOWEST violent crime states in the nation.\u00a0 In recent years Alaska and then Arizona adopted the same thing.\u00a0 So did Wyoming, though that state limited permitless carry to Wyoming residents. Whaddaya know: rivers of blood haven\u2019t swept through any of their streets, either.\u00a0 I\u2019m happy with these results: an old New Englander, I believe \u201cif I ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it.\u201d\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
One suggestion, though.\u00a0 Many on the gun owners\u2019 civil rights side have come to call this \u201cConstitutional Carry.\u201d\u00a0 Having been in a lot of different kinds of fights over the years, I\u2019ve learned not to give advantages to my opponents, or leave openings through which they can hurt me.\u00a0 I believe referring to lawful permitless carry as \u201cConstitutional Carry\u201d gives the prohibitionists such an opportunity.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 In two recent decisions which are landmark victories for our side \u2013 Heller v. District of Columbia <\/i>and McDonald, et. al. v. Chicago <\/i>\u2013 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.\u00a0 However, both of those decisions have also made it clear that the states have the right to regulate the practice.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I for one do not describe permitless \u00a0carry as \u201cConstitutional carry.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2026 \u201cthe Vermont Model.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2026but history has shown us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-firearm-owners-civil-rights","8":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}