Looks like Wyoming is getting closer to passage. NRA is reporting that there is one hold up in Arizona, and normally pro-gun legislator that they are asking members to put some pressure on. This type of bill has been tried in Wyoming before and failed. To me Arizona is the bigger prize, since it has a major city.
As I’ve said before, the primary purpose of a concealed carry license is a signaling mechanism. In a world where police officers can immediately run a check on someone to find out whether they are prohibited from owning or carrying a firearm, that becomes increasingly irrelevant. It’ll be a long time before we see carry without a permit in Pennsylvania, but the cause is helped by other states with large cities running the experiment. We were ahead of most of the pack during the initial wave of liberalization in the late 80s, and maybe we will be again too, but it’s my take that Pennsylvania politicians are a bit more timid about this stuff than they are in other states that have a stronger pro-gun culture.
Correct me if I am wrong but it is my understanding that CC without a permit is already legal in Wyoming as long as you don’t carry in an “Incorporated area”. Since 99% of Wyoming is unincorporated it has never really been an issue. Good to see them join Alaska and Vermont all the same.
For Pennsylvania, I agree that CC without a permit isn’t likely in the near future. However, I would like to see some other improvements to our permitting system:
1) Like Wyoming, have no-permit CC in the rest of the state other that a “city of the first class”….AKA Philly.
2) Like Indiana have the option of a “lifetime” cc permit. This way we won’t have to get a renewal every 5 years.
It seems that Chairman Driggs is playing the same game that PA House Judiciary Chair, Rep. Caltagirone, is playing with HB40 (the Stand Your Ground / Castle Doctrine bill), a bill which has more than half of the PA House as co-sponsors.
Dang – unlicensed concealed carry on the march – and in my lifetime. Makes me hopeful for getting shall-issue in NJ while I can still make out the front sight…
Wait, you can still make out the front sight? Dude, not fair!
I’m almost exactly the age of your co-host; and when I was young I considered getting Uncle Sam pay for my college degree in exchange for spending some time as an official Gentleman – the eye doc at Ft. Belvoir calibrated me at 20/10 and they haven’t gotten that much worse since then (though I have noticed I’m losing the close-in capability). BTW – it’s next to impossible to get an appointment to an academy from Northern Virginia.
(Actually, my eyesight is about all I haven’t let go to seed).
Wow. I have visible (from my perspective anyway) eye sight loss within 6 months of any appointment. Therefore, I don’t even qualify for a risky session of lasik. I’m pretty convinced that my poor scores in silhouette have been due to my poor eyesight.
Oof. That sucks.
One of the reason I’m always very careful with my eye protection when shooting is that loss of vision is one of my special fears – so many of my hobbies simply require vision.
Licensing may serve as a signaling mechanism now, but that was not the intent when licensing laws were first enacted across the country.
Licensing laws were first enacted as a direct infringement on the Second Amendment rights of those deemed undesirable by the legislature. Lately, this infringement has been equally applied to all of us.
The direct infringement of our rights that is a licensing requirement needs to cease altogether.
Obviously, an activity that requires a tax/fee be paid, a background check and the possession of a state-issued permission slip cannot seriously be considered a right, can it?
I would prefer to see the 2A unqualified, but there are other rights which are subject to licensing in our constitutional structure. That’s not to say I think, say, marriage licenses ought to exist either, or that it’s logical to apply that to guns, but the precedent is there.