I’m with Dave, I can’t believe the main stream media would feature anything like this. Concealed carry reform was one of the greatest strokes of strategic brilliance the gun rights movement has ever had, and I’m not sure we’d be in the position we’re in today without.
Despite the fact that a relatively small number of people bother to get licenses to carry a concealed firearm, the impact has been substantial in terms of how public debate on gun control is framed. It has allowed us to shift the debate on this issue exlusively away from sporting uses and toward self-defense, not only in the home, but in general. Most Americans, even if they are wary on the gun issue, are perfectly accepting that a person has a right to defend their own life. Concealed carry has allowed us to tie that sentiment into the gun control debate, and created a large cadre of activists who are making for interesting stories for the media to report.
In the fact of more and more of these types of mass shooting, had we kept the debate mostly on sporting uses of firearms, and only on self-defense within the home, I believe we’d be losing; most Americans wouldn’t be willing to preserve sporting uses of firearms at, what they would believe, is the expense of their own safety, and that of their children. That we have the media stepping into the debate of whether young adults who are licensed to carry should be allowed to carry on campus is an amazing achievement, and should be a harbinger of doom for the gun control movement.
12,000 members? That’s 120/campus chapter.
You don’t need 120 people to take down a single madman. One or two per class would be plenty. I can think of oh… at least 5 or 6 people that would be carrying at my law school if there weren’t laws against it.
And yeah, concealed carry was really the most brilliant thing the gun rights people did over the past 30 years. I can’t count the number of times that I have talked to a gun-fearing person and almost instantly changed their mind by telling them that half their coworkers carry and that we’ve had the law on the books since the 80s.
The concealed carry movement has made is so easy to put simple and irrefutable proof in front of someone that blows away all the anti-gun crud that the media has been feeding people for decades. People are, figuratively speaking, blown away by the revelation that we have had 20+ years of peaceful concealed carry in many areas of this country.
I have carried any time I thought I should. I have never been permitted to do so by anything other than the second amendment. I can’t recall how long it has been since I last went strapped anywhere. More than 20 years, but if I ever need to again, I will not ask permission.
Oh, I should mention that the only times people had reason to believe I was armed were two. One when I stopped five thugs from mugging me, once when I stopped a motorcycle gang from jumping me and that time I didn’t have anything on me except pocket change. All those other times I carried, no one ever knew because there was no reason for them to know.