We have an unalienable right to keep and bear arms. Once one starts asking for permission from the government to to do what one already has a right to do, then one is basically disregarding that right and asking for a privilege. A privilege can be revoked at any time by the one granting the privilege.
(Referring to the incident at Luby's cafe in Killeen in which a murderer killed her parents in her presence.)
Transcribed from the column "2nd Amendment" in the October, 1996, issue of Guns & Ammo
by Ed Moats
"The most effective means of fighting crime in the United states is to outlaw the possession of any type of firearm by the civilian populace."
So said Janet Reno at a 1991 B'nai B'rith meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Reno was then the chief prosecutor of Dade County, Florida. Today she is the attorney general of the United States and her doctrine of civilian disarmament is official federal crime control policy.
For the United States government, fighting crime means rendering civilians completely defenseless and federal constitutional doctrine is that there is no constitutional right to keep and bear arms, notwithstanding whatever the Constitution itself might have to say on the subject.
Why then has the United States Justice Department remained silent as state after state has passed statutes allowing concealed-carry permits (CCPs)? Today 31 states have "shall issue" concealed-carry laws, requiring the issuance of a CCP to any citizen who pays the fee and is not disqualified (felon, mental health, drug or alcohol commitment, etc.).
We can understand this federal silence as a clever application of the technique for cooking frogs.
Question: How do you cook a frog? Answer: Very slowly. If you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water the frog will leap out. But if you gently place the frog in a pan of cool water and slowly raise the temperature, the frog will be too cooked to leap by the time he realizes he's in trouble.
Question: "How do you steal the liberties of a free people?" Answer: "The same way you cook a frog: very slowly." This is the socialist doctrine of gradualism, employed successfully by socialists since World War II to erode the liberties of America s citizens.
The feds tolerate the explosion of state concealed-carry laws because they know these concealed-carry laws are gradually creating a culture that will facilitate the confiscation of all firearms.
"A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps," says the Scripture, accurately describing the simple among us who imprudently celebrate the liberalization of concealed-carry laws. As ignorant as lambs bleating their way to slaughter is the pitiful glee of gun owners rejoicing that their state is going to allow permits for concealed carry.
Concealed-carry permits are the deadly enemy not the friend of the right to keep and bear arms. Everyone who purchases a permit plays into the hands of the gun confiscators, who are patiently biding their time until the moment is ripe.
A gun owner who buys a concealed-weapon permit steps into six traps: Confusing the distinction between "Concealed Carry" and "Carry." In many states the CCP is required to carry a handgun at all, concealed or not. And some require the CCP to carry any firearm, even long guns, except to the hunt or the firing range. Soon a CCP will be required to take your grandfather's .22 to the dump to shoot rats. Ultimately in my opinion, a CCP will be required to possess any firearm anywhere outside your own home.
Every gun owner who buys a CCP helps establish the principle that the government may charge a fee for constitutionally secured right. If a CCP is $50, what shall it be for a free speech permit, or a permit granting protection from unreasonable searches and seizures? We all long ago acquiesced to buying government permission to build a house or operate a motor vehicle. Shall we now place constitutionally secured rights in the same category?
Similarly, everyone who obtains a CCP assents to the proposition that bearing arms is a privilege, not a right. There is an infinite gulf between these two concepts.
A privilege is granted at the state s discretion, revocable at its will (or whim). A right is vested in an individual, not subject to the grace of the state. What is done by state license is a privilege, not a right. A CCP law is itself an infringement of the constitutionally secured right to bear arms.
Everyone buying a CCP registers himself as a gun owner. Registration is the necessary antecedent to confiscation. Confiscators don t need to have the firearms registered. What they really need is to have the owners registered. Concealed-weapon permits do exactly that. When the time comes, confiscators will know whose house to search. Ominously, the March 1996 issue of Guns & Ammo reports a secret federal gun registration scheme in Pittsburgh that uses a computer program to generate a map of the city with the homes of legal firearm owners circled. The data for this map will come partly from concealed-carry permits.
Any data source that identifies gun owners will serve the confiscators purpose. On a recent visit to a gun store in Seattle, I was told by the owner that he had recently received a call from the BATF inquiring whether he kept records on his sales of gun safes. To the storekeeper's "why?" the BATF man replied "Well, we figure where there's gun safes, there's guns."
This should be no surprise. Gun owners enthusiasm for concealed-carry laws has been misplaced from the beginning. CCP laws are camouflaged registration laws, registering owners, which is even worse than registering guns. This is the reason some states require a CCP to carry a handgun at all, even if not concealed. The purpose is not to liberalize firearms possession for the law-abiding, but rather to get owners of firearms registered for the day of confiscation. [Editor's Note: In point of fact, "registration" already exists on the federal level whenever a gun buyer completes a Form 4473.]
The fifth trap is thinking that lawmakers who create the concealed- carry laws are motivated by support for the constitutional right to bear arms. If they were, they would not create the complex concealed-carry machinery, complete with application forms, fees, waiting periods, record checks, required concealment, mandatory training, renewal fees, etc.
That complex machinery is irrelevant to any legitimate purpose. All that is needed to support the constitutionally secured right to bear arms and protect the public is a simple statute making it a crime for the disqualified (felons, drug addicts, alcoholics, etc.) to carry a firearm. Nothing further is required or helpful.
Proponents may claim concealed-carry laws allow the law-abiding to pack heat while restricting firearms from the disqualified. No thinking person can be fooled by this patent canard. Denying criminals concealed-weapon permits does not deny them concealed weapons. Such laws only affect the law-abiding. Concealed-carry laws only restrict weapons from those law-abiding citizens who are unable or unwilling to pay the fee. The criminals are unaffected. No law can keep guns from gremlins.
Hence this vital question: What is the difference between a concealed-carry statute and a statute declaring it a felony for a felon to possess a firearm? To the felon there is no difference at all. But the law-abiding person must register and pay a fee. Thus, the net practical effect of a concealed-carry statute is to
- 1) compile a registration list of gun owners,
2) establish that bearing arms is a privilege, not a right, and
3) extract a fee for this privilege.
Most concealed-carry laws permit only concealed carry. That is, they disallow open carry. These laws thus further cement the current cultural bias against open carry. Yet open carry is the direction we must move if we're going to actually stop the crime wave in this country. It has been noted that "An armed society is a polite society." True, but incompletely stated. An armed society will be a polite one only if everyone knows it is armed. Concealed weapons won't induce politeness.
Someone rejoins "Under concealed-carry laws, you'll be polite to everyone, because you won't know who is armed." I reply: You don't know now who is armed!
All the infamous public massacres of recent times the Long Island Railroad, the Killeen, Texas, Luby s Cafeteria are characterized by one critical fact: The killer believed that he would be the only one there armed. Concealed carry won t change that. Open carry will.
Consider this: If you carry a weapon concealed, just who are you concealing it from? Not the vermin: You want them to know you're armed. Then you're less likely to have to use your weapon. You are concealing the weapon from the police and from the public who might call the police. In our unfortunate mindset, it is socially unacceptable for the peaceable to be armed. Because of this attitude armed crime is ubiquitous. But let the citizen carry his arms openly, and this mindset and the crime it promotes will rapidly reverse.
If our lawmakers were truly interested in curbing crime they would mandate that every qualified adult man and woman carry a firearm, long or short, concealed or open. Instead, lawmakers are creating camouflaged registration laws, while mouthing fidelity to the Second Amendment.
To counter this, gun owners should come out of the closet. In every jurisdiction where it is still legal, gun owners should carry their weapons openly. The public will at first be shocked, but will soon applaud it as violent crime skids to a halt. 