Category: RKBA

Report: Florida on Track to Become 22nd Constitutional Carry State

A report by the South Florida Sun Sentinel suggests Florida is on track to become the 22nd constitutional carry state.

Constitutional carry is a “priority” for the Republican-led Florida legislature, the Sentinel reported.

Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R) has already introduced legislation to do away with the concealed carry permit requirement for Floridians. Open carry without a permit would also be legalized by Sabatini’s bill.

Moreover, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has already made it clear he will sign constitutional carry legislation, should it reach his desk.

Florida Gun Rights’ Matt Collins posted a video online asking DeSantis, “If constitutional carry made your desk, would you sign it?”

DeSantis responded, “Of course.”

There are currently 21 constitutional carry states in the U.S. Those states are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

BLUF:
Millions are still moving along the path from reflexive support for gun control to passionate support for the right to bear arms. These voyagers are rapidly changing our culture. Last month’s public opinion polls are already out of date. The shift away from supporting gun-control is accelerating. The shift toward passionate and committed defense of citizen self-defense will be deep and lasting.

The Ruling Class won’t be able to stop it.

Why Political Moderates Walked Away from Gun-Control

Most of us have fired a gun at least once. Many of us have a gun in our home today. Gun ownership has increased steadily over the decades and is now common. Running counter to that trend, Democrat politicians became increasingly hostile towards gun owners in the last ten years. The Democrat party took that position while public opposition to gun-control grew. Today, democrat voters want gun-control as much as ever, but we saw the undecided middle and political independents step off the gun-control bandwagon. Here is why they abandoned the idea of gun-control.

The world became more dangerous.

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RUTGERS STUDY: NEW GUN OWNERS ARE ‘IMPULSIVE.’ NEW GUN OWNERS BEG TO DIFFER

Antigun think tanks and politicians push narratives that private citizens don’t “need” firearms for self-defense so they shouldn’t have them. That narrative has fallen apart over the past two years of rampant rioting and civil unrest as the same groups called to defund police.

The same antigun collectives are pushing a new narrative to dehumanize new gun owners with the tactic of shaming Americans into not exercising their Second Amendment. New gun owners have their own thoughts.

New Antigun ‘Science’

Researchers from Rutgers University,  as reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer, saw the historic surge of firearm sales over the past two years and had to do something. They slapped together a behavioral study on 2020 – 2021 first-time gun buyers.

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This is the kind of academic we should always be on guard to watch for.
This is a real, actual ‘enemy domestic’ of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
And, they infest the schools and universities, filling our children’s mind with this collectivist, authoritarian statist, mush.

Read – carefully- what she wants. Her revisions are what’s called ‘positive rights‘. What she wants the government to do, in effect granting rights from goobermint power.

Her definition of how the 1st and 2nd amendment were written are defined by her and her ilk as ‘negative rights‘. Rights already possessed by the people, that the goobermint is restricted from abridging or infringing.

Remember, when more than one politician down through history has said: ‘Any government that’s large enough to give you everything is powerful enough to take it all away.‘ One should believe them.

REDO THE FIRST TWO AMENDMENTS

BY MARY ANNE FRANKS
Speech and guns: two of the most contentious issues in America today, with controversies fueled not only by personal passions and identity politics but by competing interpretations of the Constitution. Perhaps more than any other parts of the Constitution, the First and Second Amendments inspire religious-like fervor in many Americans, with accordingly irrational results.

As legal texts go, neither of the two amendments is a model of clarity or precision. More important, both are deeply flawed in their respective conceptualizations of some of the most important rights of a democratic society: the freedom of expression and religion and the right of self-defense. These two amendments are highly susceptible to being read in isolation from the Constitution as a whole and from its commitments to equality and the collective good.

The First and Second Amendments tend to be interpreted in aggressively individualistic ways that ignore the reality of conflict among competing rights. This in turn allows the most powerful members of society to reap the benefits of these constitutional rights at the expense of vulnerable groups. Both amendments would be improved by explicitly situating individual rights within the framework of “domestic tranquility” and the “general welfare” set out in the Constitution’s Preamble.

Making such an edit to the First Amendment would provide stronger and fairer protections for the right of expression, including by acknowledging, as many state constitutions do, that every person remains responsible for abuses of that right. (Such a modification would, for example, help undo the damage caused by the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United and remove constitutional barriers to reasonable campaign-finance laws that promote democratic legitimacy.) In addition, the implicit principle of the separation of church and state should be made explicit:

Every person has the right to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and petition of the government for redress of grievances, consistent with the rights of others to the same and subject to responsibility for abuses. All conflicts of such rights shall be resolved in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons.

Both the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion shall be respected by the government. The government may not single out any religion for interference or endorsement, nor may it force any person to accept or adhere to any religious belief or practice.

Both amendments would be improved by explicitly situating individual rights within the framework of “domestic tranquility” and the “general welfare” set out in the Constitution’s Preamble.

The Second Amendment’s idiosyncratic and anachronistic focus on militias and “arms” degrades the concept of self-defense. The right to safeguard one’s life should not be conflated with or reduced to the right to use a weapon, especially a weapon that is so much more likely to inflict injury and death than to avoid it. Far better would be an amendment that guarantees a meaningful right to bodily autonomy and obligates the government to implement reasonable measures to protect public health and safety:

All people have the right to bodily autonomy consistent with the right of other people to the same, including the right to defend themselves against unlawful force and the right of self-determination in reproductive matters. The government shall take reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of the public as a whole.

Mary Anne Franks is the Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair at the University of Miami School of Law and the author of “The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech.”

Moving steadily along

[Ohio]Senate votes to allow concealed carry of guns without training or background checks

The Ohio Senate passed legislation Wednesday that will allow any Ohioans 21 and older to carry a concealed weapon, so long as they’re allowed to possess it under state and federal law.

Currently, Ohioans must pass a background check and demonstrate proof of eight hours of training to obtain a concealed carry license. Senate Bill 215 nixes these guardrails, along with a requirement that armed people “promptly” inform police officers that they’re carrying a concealed weapon during a stop.

All Senate Republicans, minus Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, voted for the legislation. Democrats opposed the bill.

Both the House and Senate have now passed separate but similar versions of “constitutional carry” or “permitless carry” legislation, as it’s commonly known. Lawmakers will have to agree on a final version to send to Gov. Mike DeWine.

A DeWine spokesman said Wednesday the governor is reviewing the bill and noted he has “long supported the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.”

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‘The Second Amendment wears lipstick’ — Study shows gun ownership among women on the rise

CLEVELAND — The number of women who own a gun is on the rise. A recent study from Harvard University shows that 42% of gun owners in the country are women. That’s a 14% rise over the last five years. The same study found nearly 3.5 million women became gun owners between January 2019 and April 2021.

“It’s a responsibility. It’s a huge responsibility,” said Amanda Suffecool.

Suffecool calls herself an “accidental activist.” A firearms instructor and radio host, Suffecool is also an advocate for gun rights in America.

“Unfortunately, the world is not the warm, fuzzy place it used to be,” said Candy Petticord.

Petticord is also a firearms instructor and a mom of 12. She started shooting five years ago.

“I woke up,” she said when asked why she decided to buy her first gun. “I realized yes, I’m the mom. I’m the caregiver but I’m also the protector when my husband is away. So the kitchen knives, forks and spoons weren’t going to do the job.”

In the Harvard study, a quarter of the woman who own a firearm said self-defense was the reason they wanted to buy a gun. In another study from the female gun ownership group A Girl and A Gun, the women they surveyed gave many reasons. The top included the cultural upheaval in the Summer of 2020, the 2020 elections, lack of law enforcement resources, and uncertainty because of the pandemic.

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Not one thing SloJoe wants would have stropped that

Biden Uses Sandy Hook Anniversary to Call for More Gun Control

Joe Biden put gun control back on the front burner, using the ninth anniversary of the Sandy Hook mass shooting to call for stricter gun control laws, according to CNN.

Calling the shooting—committed by a disturbed young man who murdered his mother and took her legally-purchased firearms to the school in Newtown, Conn.—an “unconscionable act of violence,” Biden said he wants the U.S. Senate to pass three pieces of legislation. One expands background checks, another would prohibit gun ownership by “abusers,” and the third would reportedly create “community violence intervention” programs under the “Build Back Better” program.

CNN’s report portrayed Biden’s wish list as “limited scope” measures. But the president’s gun control agenda is hardly that. It includes a ban on so-called “assault weapons” and original capacity magazines. There would be waiting periods and other hoops through which law-abiding gun owners would have to jump while criminals would continue ignoring the laws and remain fairly well-armed.

This comes as Rasmussen Reports a new daily presidential tracking poll showing Biden’s popularity remains at a low, with only 21 percent of likely voters strongly approving of his job performance. On the other side, 47 percent of likely voters “strongly disapprove” of his job performance.

An unidentified “senior White House official” admitted to reporters that none of the president’s agenda items are enough “to fully solve this problem.” So Biden wants Congress to act.

That may not be likely with the midterm elections on the horizon in 2022. There is lots of speculation Republicans may capture at least one house of Congress, and possibly both the House and Senate, effectively slamming a door on Biden’s agenda.

For the present, CNN noted anti-gun Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy is hopeful “negotiations could resume in the coming weeks to produce some bipartisan reform.” But what does that mean? When CNN talks about “gun reform” and “gun safety,” they’re talking about gun control. Grassroots gun rights activists call that “camo-speak,” because it camouflages what gun control advocates are actually seeking.

The White House “official” said Biden is still looking for a nominee to head the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Earlier this year, Biden had to embarrassingly withdraw the nomination of former ATF agent David Chipman because of his advocacy of gun bans and tighter gun regulation. Gun rights activists from across the country flooded Capitol Hill with opposition to Chipman.

Meanwhile, Biden is under fire for being unable to handle the current crime crisis in major cities, with violent crime and homicides on the rise. According to Fox News, “At least 12 major cities, including New York, have already set historical murder records in 2021. Robberies and assaults are also on the rise, and retailers in major cities across the country are reporting an uptick in organized smash-and-grab crimes during the busy holiday shopping season.”

Bill to allow concealed firearms without a license in Ohio clears Senate panel

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio Senate could vote as soon as Wednesday on legislation to allow people to carry a concealed handgun without a permit and no longer require them to notify law enforcement during proactively traffic stops that they’re armed.

Senate Bill 215 cleared a Senate committee on Tuesday after hours of testimony, mostly in opposition to the measure. The Republican-sponsored bill comes after the Ohio House passed similar legislation last month; should SB215 pass the Senate, it remains to be seen whether lawmakers would decide to send that bill or the House bill to Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk.

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NY State Lawmaker Thinks Constitutionality Is Irrelevant

When a law is challenged in court, what’s really being challenged is whether that law is constitutional or not. The constitutionality of any given law is something we should always be questioning. Just because we think it may yield some benefit or not is irrelevant. What matters is whether that law should exist within the framework the Founding Fathers provided.

However, it seems that some people don’t really believe that.

One such person got to write their opinion at Newsweek:

Kyle Rittenhouse’s recent acquittal portends a dire future: one in which anyone can bring a loaded weapon anywhere, and where daily encounters can turn into deadly shootouts within seconds. Luckily, states are free to regulate the concealed carry of weapons, while balancing the rights granted by the Second Amendment. But right now, the Supreme Court is considering a case that could have sweeping implications for the safety of my constituents and many other Americans. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, the Court must grapple with the very real tensions between public safety and constitutional rights.

…

Many gun regulations, like so much else in our legal system, do have a racist and anti-immigrant origin story and are frequently applied unequally to people of color. But my state’s concealed-carry permit law comports with a long, if imperfect, history and tradition of regulating guns in public spaces. Conservative justices have long held these traditions sacrosanct when interpreting the Second Amendment. It remains to be seen whether this fealty to history comes from a genuinely held belief, or is simply a convenient means to an end. Regardless of how the Court rules, my colleagues and I stand ready to continue legislating in the best interest of the communities we represent. As one of the people closest to this problem, I believe elected officials like me should be closest to crafting the solution.

In other words, this New York state lawmaker believes that he and his colleagues should be free to pass whatever laws they want and the courts should give deference to their decisions rather than consider the constitutionality of those laws.

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Comment O’ The Day
If the environment is more favorable for criminal activity (no cash bail, cheering on property destruction, refusal to prosecute, defunding police, etc.), it should come as no surprise that there will be an increase in demand for guns, both from criminals who seek to exploit the favorable conditions for their endeavors and also from law-abiding citizens who seek to defend themselves from lawlessness.

Only any idiot would think this is a chicken/egg paradox

The Paradox of the 2020 Gun-Sales Spike

In a City Journal piece over the summer, I cast some doubt on the idea that 2020’s massive homicide spike — a 30 percent increase — had been driven by strong gun sales. America has so many guns that even a really strong year for sales doesn’t boost the supply that much, and most crime guns tend to be fairly old anyway.

Most interestingly, places with the biggest gun-sales spikes didn’t also have the biggest shooting spikes, according to a then-new study in Injury Prevention. I further noted, however, some NYPD numbers suggesting that while guns purchased less than a year ago accounted for 10 percent of crime-gun traces in 2019, they were 18 percent in 2020. 

Now we have national data to update both the geographic and the gun-trace findings. Oddly enough, they both hold up. Comparing all of 2020 with all of 2019, the states with the biggest gun-sales spikes were not the same as the states with the biggest homicide spikes. But nationwide, new guns did show up quite a bit more in police departments’ gun traces. 

Here’s a simple, per capita way of comparing changes in homicide rates with changes in gun sales (as measured via background checks for gun purchases, with a few states with quirky data excluded). There’s no obvious connection between the two, and the picture is the same when you plot the percentage change in one variable against the percentage change in the other.


The new trace data, however, are less kind to the latest additions to America’s gun stock. In 2019, about 20 percent of traced guns had been purchased less than a year prior; in 2020, this rose to about 30 percent. (The Trace has some more ways of cutting these numbers here, as does my colleague Charles Fain Lehman here.)  Continue reading “”

RKBA and self defense is not just nationwide, it’s international.

Morning Joe: Hard for Russia to Subdue Ukraine — People Have a Million Guns!

Wait! Was that an NRA spokesman on Morning Joe today, making the case for the Second Amendment?

Nope, turns out it was actually David Ignatius. But the hyper-establishment Washington Post columnist/editor and Morning Joe foreign-policy maven unwittingly made a strong case for the right to keep and bear arms!

Commenting on the price Putin would pay if he ordered an invasion of Ukraine, Ignatius said:

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For your consideration…………..

Charles Cooke:
I’ll be teaching an online course: The History of the Second Amendment

Hullo, everyone. I’m just popping in to let you all know about an online course I’m teaching early next year called The History of the Second Amendment. It’s with a new startup called Chapter, which noticed that pretty much every course they were offering was either progressive or progressive-adjacent, decided that it didn’t want to become an echo chamber, and so asked me to teach one, too. I suggested the history of the right to keep and bear arms as a topic, they agreed, and here were are.

Chapter describes its system as “like a book club, but way more fun.” Each week, I’ll provide a reading list (which could be articles, reviews, videos, podcasts, or primary source documents), along with insights and tips on each one. There will be a community forum in which you can discuss each topic, as well as a rolling Q&A in which I will answer questions — both on their website and, if the topic warrants it, by video. Because people are busy, everything will be “asynchronous” — that is, you can take part whenever you’re free, rather than at times that are set by me. The course will last four weeks, it will cost $40 (actually: $35 for Ricochet members), and it will run the gamut.

— Week One will be on pre-Revolutionary America. We’ll explore how the right to keep and bear arms came over with the colonists from Britain, before making its way into the heart of American law.

— Week Two will be on the Founding Era. We’ll ask why the Second Amendment was added to the federal constitution, what were the Founders’ intentions in including it, and what did militias have to do with a right “of the people”?

— Week Three will be on the post-Civil War period, during which the Second Amendment took on a new meaning — especially during the era of Jim Crow — and was changed by the 14th Amendment.

— Week Four will be on the Second Amendment as it exists today. We’ll cover contemporary American jurisprudence, the Heller decision, and the political rebirth of the right.

The course will start on January 24th, 2022. If it interests you, can sign up here: https://getchapter.app/@cooke/guns. And if it doesn’t? Well, I shall cry into my golf cart batteries. Chapter has agreed to knock $5 off the price for Ricochet members if you use the code RICOCHET when checking out, so if you do sign up, make sure you do that.

 

BLUF:
More than 36 million Americans blew a big fat raspberry at Biden and his gun-banning squad, according to NICS background checks, and that only includes the first 11 months of 2021. It does not include private firearm sales, which are still legal in free states……..
In short, gun sales have skyrocketed. Ammunition sales have skyrocketed.
Public opinion is shifting, the polls are showing, as more and more Americans realize the utility a firearm can offer…………..
This is, however, not the time to celebrate. We are only one executive order away from yet another infringement. Our right to keep and bear arms requires eternal vigilance.

Remain vigilant, friends.

Analysis: Why we will win America’s hearts and minds

These are the most perilous times many Second Amendment watchdogs have ever seen. Our right to keep and bear arms is under constant assault by a troika of would-be infringers: the Biden-Harris administration — the most anti-gun group of bullies to occupy the White House in modern times — the legacy media, which is aids and abets Biden’s every whim regardless of its constitutionality, and the anti-gun industry, which provides the playbook and orchestrates the campaign.

Still, there are glimmers of hope. The light at the end of the tunnel may be dim, but at least it’s visible.

At least for now, things appear to be changing, albeit slowly. Thankfully, a growing number of Americans has stopped listening to the anti-gun forces. In other words, regardless of what Biden, Murphy, or Giffords are saying, the liberal bubble has been pierced by the truth, and worried folks are buying guns.

Over the past months, I’ve talked to dozens of new gun owners. Many described themselves as liberal or formerly liberal. Here’s what they are saying about why they broke ranks with the gun banners and bought guns

Root Cause

New gun owners revealed near unanimity for the main reason they purchased a firearm: the surge of violent crime.

Smash-and-grab robbery gangs, well-publicized home-invasions and the newest media buzzword “follow-home robberies.” have folks terrified they will be ambushed in their home or on their doorstep, in zip codes where these types of crimes are not supposed to happen.

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House Passes 2022 NDAA with Red Flag Law Language Removed

The House of Representatives passed a final version of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Tuesday night which does not contain the red flag law language present in the original.

The Washington Post reported that the NDAA passed Tuesday by vote of 363 to 70. Following the vote the NRA tweeted:

On September 25, 2021, Breitbart News noted the initial 2022 NDAA legislation passed House with red flag law language applicable to service men and women. The 2022 NDAA contained a provision authorizing military courts to issue orders restraining military personnel from “possessing, receiving, or otherwise accessing a firearm.”

The provision for prohibiting gun possession is contained in Section 529 of the 2022 NDAA. That section was titled, “Authority Of Military Judges And Military Magistrates To Issue Military Court Protective Orders.”

The specific provision would have given military courts the authority to prohibit gun possession via protective orders in two ways: 1. By giving the subject of the order an “opportunity to be heard on the order.” 2. By issuing the order ex parte.

However, Section 529 in the final version of the 2022 NDAA is completely different, dealing with “exemptions and deferments for a possible military draft.”

Florida Governor DeSantis Signals Support for Permitless Gun Carry

Florida may soon become the next permitless gun-carry state.

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis indicated he supports eliminating the permit requirement for concealed carry in Florida. When asked by a gun-rights activist at a private event, he said he would sign a bill to that end if one made it to his desk.

“Of course,” DeSantis said in a video made public on Tuesday.

Christina Pushaw, a spokesperson for the governor, said the video accurately represents his position. However, she noted the governor would need to see the details of an actual bill before commenting further.

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Did King County, WA Prosecutor’s Office Just Illustrate Gun Law Failures?

A report from the King County Prosecutor’s Office late last month showing the uptick in gun-related violence in the county that encompasses far-left Seattle only further amplifies the assertion from Evergreen State gun rights activists that gun control laws adopted by citizen initiative, and by the Seattle City Council over the past six years have had the exact opposite effect they were supposed to have.

Beginning in 2014 with the passage of Initiative 594—the so-called “universal background check” measure requiring background checks on all firearm transfers—and continuing with the adoption of a special gun and ammunition tax in 2015, gun control efforts were presented to voters as tolls to reduce so-called “gun violence.”

But the Prosecutor’s office has released data showing the opposite has occurred. Despite the background check initiative, the gun and ammunition tax and more recently, passage in 2018 of Initiative 1639, which prohibits the sale of modern semi-auto rifles to anyone under age 21, plus mandates a training requirement and classifies all semi-auto rifles of any caliber, including rimfires, as “semiautomatic assault rifles,” more people are getting shot and more shots are being fired.

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‘Surveys’ are brethren to ‘Polls’ i.e. hocus pocus to advance an agenda. Knowing who participated, informs you what the agenda is.
And the one thing missing in the whole deal about “policy effects” is a question about how all this interacts with the Constitutional restrictions that are slowly being acknowledged and put back into effect

Survey: Gun Policy Experts Find Some Common Ground Amid Broad Disagreement

Gun policy has become increasingly polarized over the past several years and it often seems like compromise is impossible, but new data suggests that may not be the case.

While wide gaps remain in attitudes toward gun policies, research indicates some areas of agreement among gun policy experts–often beyond the typical proposals that dominate the conversation around guns. That’s according to survey data published on Tuesday by the RAND Corporation. Researchers found that experts across the ideological spectrum were largely united on policy outcome objectives and even shared some common interest in specific policies such as prosecuting prohibited possessors who seek firearms and expanding mental health prohibitions.

“Our results strongly suggest that differing favorability ratings in the permissive and restrictive groups were explained largely, and indeed almost exclusively, by differences in estimates of what the true effects of the policies will be, not by differences in which policy outcomes predict the groups’ favorability ratings,” the study said. “Indeed, both groups’ most strongly preferred policy goals were to reduce firearm suicides and firearm homicides.”

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Okay, so the idjit pansy quoted in the previous post ‘pearl clutched’, vapor locked, and mentioned the Christmas Card photo of the Massie family bearing arms.

Alrighty then!™. Here’s the photo. Sound off in comments if you can recognize all the guns the family has – literally – on hand.

Don’t fear constitutional carry: it makes sense and promotes safer communities

By Sen. Kim Ward

It’s always the same predictions of doom and bloodshed from gun-control activists. They warn us of pending disaster if Pennsylvania becomes the 22nd state to adopt so-called constitutional carry rules that would allow law-abiding adults who legally own a handgun to conceal-carry it without a permit. Thirty-four states, including Pennsylvania, already allow open carry without a permit.

We heard the same predictions when states first adopted right-to-carry laws, which now exist in 43 states. None of the dire predictions came true after states adopted Constitutional carry. Not even one of these states has seen the need to reverse the laws. Indeed, none have even held a legislative hearing, let alone a vote, on undoing these laws.

A Constitutional carry bill passed both the Pennsylvania House and Senate with bi-partisan support. Regrettably, for law-abiding Pennsylvanians, Governor Wolf has already promised to veto it. The bill would only make two small changes to state laws, which is already a right-to-carry state. It would allow people to start carrying more quickly and for slightly less cost.

The fact remains, business and private property owners still have the right to exclude handguns. Prohibitions on carrying in sensitive places and regarding the misuse of guns are unchanged. Pennsylvanians are still required to pass a background check to buy a handgun.

The most significant change from constitutional carry is how quickly people can carry a gun if the need arises. Sheriff departments in Pennsylvania try to issue concealed handgun permits within 45 days after someone has met the requirements. If a woman is being stalked or threatened, she won’t have to wait for a license. The threat may be over well before the 45 days are met.

To make matters worse, last year police in Philly, Montgomery, Allegheny, and at least five Pennsylvania other counties stopped issuing concealed handgun permits during coronavirus outbreak. And some were still slow to issue permits at the beginning of this year.

Philadelphia also regularly revokes permits for such trivial reasons as notifications to the sheriff’s office by the permit holder that he is moving to another address in the city, parking tickets, if someone burglarizes your home, and a host of other, similar reasons.

And it will save Pennsylvanians the cost of obtaining their license. These costs matter; just compare the numbers in neighboring states, Illinois, and Indiana. In Illinois, a five-year permit costs $450, there is no license fee in Indiana. While only 4% of Illinoisans have a concealed handgun permit, 22% of adults in Indiana already have one, the second-highest number of permits per capita.
More importantly, the people who benefit from carrying are those who are the most likely victims of violent crime, overwhelmingly who live in high crime urban areas. They are also the ones who are most sensitive to all the fees required to get a permit. In Illinois, wealthy white males who live in the suburbs are overwhelmingly the ones who get permits. In Indiana, there are many more permits issued to people living in urban, heavily minority zip codes.

Gun control advocates claimed there would be blood in the streets when then-Gov. Bob Casey signed Pennsylvania’s concealed carry law in 1989. That didn’t’t happen. The fact that several dozen peer-reviewed academic studies show there’s no evidence of any uptick in gun crimes linked to concealed carry laws, and most show violent crime declines. Research also shows that murder rates fall even more when states move to Constitutional Carry laws.

When Police asked its 450,000 law enforcement members about the effects of private gun ownership, 76% of officers answered that legally armed citizens are either very or extremely important in reducing crime.
Today, there are over 21.5 million concealed handgun permit holders nationwide. Permit holders nationwide are incredibly law-abiding. Police officers are extremely rarely convicted of firearms-related violations, but it still happens at a rate twelve times more often than for permit holders. In the 19 states with comprehensive permit revocation data, the average revocation rate is one-tenth of one percent. Usually, permit revocations occur because someone moved or died or forgot to bring their permit while carrying.

Gun control advocates keep trying to take advantage of people’s fears of the unknown and claim that bad things will happen when people are allowed to defend themselves and their families. But Pennsylvanians don’t have to guess about what will happen with Constitutional carry. Twenty-one states are proof that Constitutional carry is common sense.

Senator Kim Ward is Majority Leader of the Pennsylvania Senate and represents the 39th district in Westmoreland County. John R. Lott, Jr. is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.

My first squad leader in the Army was a font of personal advice.
One I liked a lot is: “Experience is the best teacher and the best experience is someone else’s, because it’s usually less expensive and less painful.”

Lessons Learned From The Rittenhouse Situation

Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong.

I’m going to start by saying this here and now, lest there be any confusion. While he made some decisions I might question later on here, I don’t think that he was necessarily wrong for making those decisions. I have the benefit of hindsight at work here, and I’m not interested in second-guessing him.

However, I do think that cases like his give us all a great opportunity to learn, so that’s what I did.

Here are a few of my takeaways from his case.

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