TexasCHLforum.com

oldgringo, thanks for clarifying. I think we're on the same page now. I must have been confused about what you were saying.

Chris

Oldgringo wrote:* I further understand that the 1st Amendment gives me the right to take an apparent differing view of any given subject.

Of course it does, and nobody here would argue differently. But I think the collective counterpoint being made here, for which you are taking a little bit of heat, is that if you argue in favor of licensing (and it seems like that is what you're doing), then you are fundamentally arguing for a restriction on everyone else's rights (not just your own) - a restriction that you are OK with because you don't mind having to procure a license in order to exercise your right, but which nobody else seems to be OK with.

Am I making sense here? Please let me know if I am mischaracterizing your take on it.

Here's the thing. . . It appears that you want to have some assurance that the other person is lawfully allowed to be carrying - an understandable concern, but not one that licensing really deals with. Here's why: criminals don't care about no stinkin' license, so they will carry anyway, open or concealed. So if you require licensing for the RKBA, the only people who are going to pay attention to it anyway are the very ones you don't really need to worry about. And the criminals are still going to carry unlawfully, whether or not you or I have a license to carry lawfully. So the truth is, whether the other guy walking toward you with a gun on his hip is an honest and upright citizen, or a predacious criminal, you don't really have any way of knowing it anyway.

You might argue that by presenting LEOs with our CHL and TDL, they know that we are the good guys. OTH, I could argue just as easily that by running our TDL alone, they could tell whether or not we were A) good guys; and B) allowed to carry. If they run our ID, and no criminal arrests, gang associations, etc., show up in the record, they they already know we are not criminals, and then whether or not we are in possession of a weapon, concealed or not, is irrelevant.

jimlongley wrote:

mr.72 wrote:

Oldgringo wrote: Yes sir, Mr. TAM! That's what I thought you said and I am in agreement with you.

Some sort of screening process must take place to assure the general public and others (me) that those who carry, whether inside or outside of their britches, are qualified to legally do so. In the case of our conceal carry priviledge/right, that screening process is consumated with our CHL.

I don't want to speak for Ye Olde Annoyed One, but I do believe I am in agreement with him in not advocating any requirement for a license of any sort to carry a gun in whatever way you see fit.

I disagree categorically with your statement: "Some sort of screening process must take place to assure the general public and others (me) that those who carry, whether inside or outside of their britches, are qualified to legally do so". Why apply this screening process to the one and only right that is enumerated in the Constitution with the words "shall not be infringed"? I personally believe that the founding fathers wrote those four words in there for precisely the reason that they knew of the temptation to require some kind of screening or selection of who has the right to keep and bear arms, and they wanted to make it absolutely certain that such efforts were strictly forbidden.

As far as the original topic of this thread, I agree that the text of the 2nd Amendment is plainly what it is. Your right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Period. Doesn't matter open carry, concealed, in your underpants or one gun in each hand wherever you go. It's all the very same right. So I guess that means I disagree with whatever OC proponents there are who might suggest that open carry is a right, but concealed carry is not. There's no difference. That's like saying free speech is a right, but free thought is not.

I agree, why MUST we have such a system? To placate the masses? To keep from upsetting someone? To keep from upsetting you?

I'm sorry, I don't see anywhere in the Constitution where you have the right to decide whether I can carry a gun or not, only that the right shall not be infringed.

Licensing is an infringement, pure and simple, the only MUST is that the government MUST get its hands off our rights.

Let me categorically and unequivocally state that I do not favor licensing/screening. Period. Again, what I said was that I believe the political realities of the situation are that we will have to dismantle licensing incrementally. That means that, between now and the ultimate goal of eliminating licensing, we will have to pass through a couple of stages where licensing would be required in order to assuage the fears of hoplophobes. At each stage, the licensing requirements would be further loosened as the non gun owning population becomes more and more comfortable with the idea of lawful carry. But the end game is to reach a point where licensing of any kind is no longer required. I have a license. I got it because I recognize the current necessity of doing so if I want to exercise my RKBA without being jailed for it. But I would rather not have that burden placed upon me, as it is an infringement on my RKBA.

The fact is that the licensing requirement is probably a barrier to tens of thousands of lawful and law-abiding gun owners who are either intimidated by the process, or cannot afford the cost of it, and who consequently don't exercise their right to keep and bear arms. (The definition of the verb "bear" is "carry.")

So, oldgringo, I want to make it clear to you that I do not favor licensing. I only recognize it as a currently politically necessary concession on an incremental road to eliminating licensing altogether. Why? Because what government has the power to grant, it also has the power to take away. That is why our rights are natural and God-given, not government-granted. The whole purpose of the Bill of Rights was to tell government what it may not do to citizens, and to limit its authority over their natural and God-given rights. The right to keep and bear arms, which shall not be infringed, is one of those rights. If you believe that government has the rightful authority to infringe on your RKBA, then you naturally also believe that government has the rightful authority to limit your political speech, and dictate your religious affiliation to you.

Analogy #1 (1st Amendment), Government has no no business your religious expression:
It would be like government issuing the edict that the Southern Baptist Convention is a cult, and all Christians must obtain a license to prove that they are members of and believe in the doctrines of the Episcopalian Church - that they do not practice full immersion baptism, and that they do believe in the transubstantiation of the eucharist. Government has no business in those issues.

Analogy #2 (1st Amendment), Government has no business governing your political speech:
It would be like government averring that Democrat political speech is legal, but Republican political speech isn't. In the Soviet Union, there was no legal requirement to be a party member, but there was a legal requirement to be a party member if you wanted to vote. And political speech was not suppressed - as long as it was party approved political speech. Government has no business trying to regulate your political speech.

Analogy #3 (1st Amendment), Government has no business limiting your freedom of association:
It would be like government outlawing Free Masonry, the Elks, and the Rotary Club, on the grounds that what happens in the privacy of their meetings might possibly be subversive. (And in fact, much of what happened organizationally among the founders prior to and during the revolution occurred in masonic lodges, because they could not be easily infiltrated by British agents.) Government has no business regulating with whom you may associate.

Analogy #4 (2nd Amendment), Government has no business infringing your right to keep and bear arms:
It would be like government outlawing .223, .243, .270, .308, .30-06, & .300 Win Mag because 5 of the 7 are currently in use as military calibers and have no "legitimate" use for hunting or home protection, while the 5th and 6th (.243 and .270) are necked down from military calibers (.308 and .30-06 respectively). They are too powerful for you to own. After all, we don't want criminals to get their hands on these things, do we? You are allowed to have a single shot rile in .22 LR (since you don't really have a legitimate use for magazine capacity), but it must be kept stored at the local police station for your own safety and the safety of your family. And you must requisition from the police, at your cost, the exact number of cartridges you will fire at the range that day. All spent cases and unfired cartridges are to be returned to the police station for accounting, along with your dandy .22, upon leaving the range. (And in fact, General Gage sought to both disarm the colonists and to deprive them of gun powder and lead so that their muskets would be useless.)

Government. Has. No. Business. Infringing. My. 2nd Amendment. Rights. In. Any. Way. Whatsoever. Period. As Suzanna Gratia Hupp so famously quoted, "How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual... as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of." By advocating screening/licensing, you are advocating a government view that the citizenry is neither trustworthy nor productive, and that we must prove to government that we are so before we can be trusted with the rights already granted to us by the Constitution. How insulting is that?

The corollary truth is that we cannot realistically expect the ultimate political victory if we are not willing to tackle the problem incrementally - but that does not mean that I either favor licensing, nor do I take the view that licensing requirements are the most desirable ultimate outcome.

Purplehood wrote:I think we need to start a new thread to discuss this issue of carry in the underpants. Might want to throw in some Freudian comments along the way.

. . . not to mention tips on avoiding corrosion, the treatment of chemically induced skin rashes, the effects of tritium on genetics, and the management of lint and other "debris" with regard to rifling and accuracy. . .

Oldgringo wrote:I agree with Chas. and The Annoyed Man if they said what I think they said.

An "in your face" open carry position is not in our long term best interests in the larger scheme of things. As TAM suggests, open carry, should it ever pass, must have some qualification/license attached to it, IMHO. Would you want everybody running around in a car/truck without some qualifying process? Yeah, yeah...I know, the constitution doesn't mention cars and trucks but that was then and this is now.

A slight correction...

What I said was that I think an open carry license might make sense as an interim step in an incremental plan toward total deregulation of firearm carry, open and concealed, by anyone legally allowed to be in possession of said firearm. In other words, the currently existing prohibitions against firearm possession by gang members, convicted felons (at least those who have not petitioned the court for the restoration of their rights), minors unaccompanied by an adult, etc., would continue to be in effect. And BTW, under the current state of affairs, anybody who is not currently prohibited by law from being in possession of a gun already has the right to carry it in their vehicle - licensed or not.

There is no logical reason to require law abiding citizens to obtain a license to carry, by whatever method, in order to enforce laws against those who are prohibited by law from carrying a gun in the first place. But that is my perfect world scenario. As a pragmatist, I recognize that we are on the road to that perfect world, but we are not there yet; and thus, licensing in the interim will probably be necessary until the general public gains enough comfort with the concept that they cease to be an obstacle to our freedom.

I view it through two different lenses. On a purely philosophical level, don't think that the RKBA differentiates between open or concealed carry. From a purely historical perspective, those founders that carried pistols for self defense tended to do so in a somewhat concealed manner for fashion reasons and for reasons of what was in the context of the time, considered to be good manners. At the time, pistols were carried in the open when the person carrying them had reasonable expectation that he was actually going to need them. That being said, there was no legal prohibition at the time, of which I am aware, which differentiated between open and concealed carry - that is, until the British made it an issue by insisting on disarming the colonists at Boston.

Given the above, I understand the RKBA to mean just that, and that whether we choose to carry in the open or concealed is our individual decision to make without oversight from government.

On the other hand, I am a political realist and I try to see things from a practical perspective. Having moved here from a state where concealed carry is practically non-existent, and for the most part, heavily discouraged, I am very happy to have a CHL, and I think wisdom dictates that caution is called for in the way we approach the further liberalizing of our RKBA, lest we lose more than we gain. I would love nothing better than to reverse all wrong with one fell swoop, but A) I don't think we have a snowball's chance in hades of pulling off, and B) there does exist a political opposition, and they will do everything they can to thwart us, leading to some of the issues that Charles outlined above. We lost our rights incrementally, partly because we gave them up incrementally, but also because it was incrementalism that swayed the fence sitters to acquiesce to the gradual loss of a right that they don't choose to exercise. I strongly believe that the most lasting and effective way to regain our rights in a way to make them stick, is to reverse the incremental trend in our favor. You are never going to convince any anti-RKBA activists to change their tune. However, convincing that vast middle ground of people who don't hold strong opinions about it one way or the other as to the rightness of our cause is absolutely essential to our success. An "in your face," confrontational attitude will likely convince them that we are gun nuts, and we will never sway them to our cause. Therefore, the incremental approach, where they can see for themselves that each loosening of the controls on the RKBA doesn't result in streets running with blood, is our best bet for success.

To me, the incremental approach would look something like this:

• Phase 1: Open carry with an OHL, concealed carry with a CHL;
  Phase 2: Open carry with no permit, concealed carry with a CHL;
  Phase 3: No license required for either open or concealed carry.

Phases 2 & 3 assume that the individual in question is otherwise lawfully allowed to be in possession of a firearm.

But, however that incrementalism is structured, there is no place in its leadership at the legislative level for political amateurs. As Charles has wisely pointed out on another thread, the current version of a bill supported by opencarry.org was drafted by a law student - not a lawyer - and it contains critical tactical errors which have serious strategic implications. There is no room in this process if we are to be successful for anyone who is not a level-headed, experienced, legal scholar and a sober thinker and strategist.

That's my 2¢.