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Freedom To Carry

The lamestream media told you:

Nothing.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

Will "Freedom To Carry" replace "Right To Carry"? It's moving that way in Texas and elsewhere.

With state legislative sessions starting nationwide, the right to keep and bear arms is front and center in people's minds and some state legislatures.

So-called "right to carry," which requires government interference, paperwork, applications, approvals , taxes called "fees," mandatory classes, written tests, shooting tests, plastic-coated permission slips, fingerprinting, photographs, entries into criminal databases and expiration dates for your "rights," well, this has definitely moved the right to bear arms significantly ahead. Is it time to go further and reach "Freedom To Carry"?

Also called Vermont- or Alaska-style carry, basically the government stays out of your face as you exercise your fundamental human and civil right to own and carry property. Having a firearm, if you're doing nothing wrong, is not a crime. What a concept. A woman can put a handgun in her handbag and go about her day without fear of arrest.

Under the infringement of so-called "reciprocity" schemes, your human and civil rights as an American have been reduced to a list of government-approved states for licensees only, when you leave your home state. The 98% of the public that refuses to jump through the hoops, be taxed, get on the criminal database and get "rights" papers is left out in the cold when they travel under the current model. Enormous police effort that could be going directly toward reducing crime is instead being diverted into registering, regulating and tracking the innocent.

The biggest argument against government-free Constitutional Carry is that it does away with the required training for a carry license. Training is good, we all agree. But are too many trainers now lined up at this government-made trough to feed? Are they afraid they won't be able to make money like regular entrepreneurs, if government doesn't force people to attend their classes?

There is also a fear that if people bear arms without the enforced classes, the dumb idiots will kill people out of stupidity -- sort of like the argument the anti-gun-rights people make about guns in general. That's false of course, since less than 2% of the public gets a license and hence the required class, but half the public has guns. The 50% of the people who have guns without the king's permission slips seem to get along just fine without being forced to take a class under penalty of arrest.

This however is the silver lining of Constitutional Carry. With your rights restored, and training provided on a voluntary basis, trainers will be free to offer classes to the general public the way General Mills sells cereal. Everyone should have some. You want some of this?

Instead of focusing on a tiny fraction of the public and leaving everyone else in darkness, we can finally move to school-based education. No student should be able to graduate without a healthy understanding of firearms, their social utility, and a demonstrated ability to safely discharge a firearm at a target. Use the Arizona high-school marksmanship act as a basis, it's a sizzler: http://www.gunlaws.com/HighSchoolMarksmanship.htm

It is so totally American, and by replacing the current state of TV-fueled gun ignorance with enlightenment and understanding -- accidents will drop, safety will improve, national readiness will skyrocket, and the fear that there won't be enough training opportunities will fall apart as the stale BS it is.

If you do one thing this season, push for Constitutional Carry in your state. Draft a bill. Introduce a bill. Use our approach in Arizona and seek to simply repeal the unconstitutional obnoxious offensive ban against your civil rights. You're an American. You can do this.

Call -- don't write -- your local gun-rights chapter, even if you're not a member, you fool. Find them in our National Directory. Tell them you would support Freedom To Carry in your state. Tell them you would join (or donate) if they draft a Constitutional Carry law. Get this ball rolling. You're an American. You can do this.

Comments

Craig R. Brownell

I have been a firearms trainer for over 41 years and my permit-to-carry training certifications are recognized by multiple states.

I would love nothing more than "Freedom to Carry" so I could reduce my rates from "discretionary expenditure" to "anyone can afford this" and run two classes per day instead of one per week. I have to eat, and charge what is necessary to keep the doors open.

People would take the training because they could afford it and not because it was required. The worst training available is the book in the box with the gun or "a friend taught me".

Sad is that among the most uninformed are those writing and passing legislation.

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About the Author

  • Freelance writer Alan Korwin is a founder and past president of the Arizona Book Publishing Association. With his wife Cheryl he operates Bloomfield Press, the largest producer and distributor of gun-law books in the country. Here writing as "The Uninvited Ombudsman," Alan covers the day's stories as they ought to read. Read more.

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