I don't think you'll find many here who will disagree with you on general principle.tfrazier wrote:Do we fear fighting for our constitutional rights based on the risk that state controlled privileges will be restricted?
CHL laws are the State's method for controlling who can and who can't LEGALLY carry a concealed handgun in public. Therefore, the entire CHL system is simply masking the fact that our right to keep and BEAR arms is, has been, and continues to be infringed. CHL does not grant you any rights...the State can revoke it as a result of any legislative session, and for many other reasons outside that.
CHL does, however, let the State track exactly how many law abiding citizens are carrying guns in public. That's one of those facts that incoming totalitarian governments love to know.
We take what we can get, and if CHL is the best we can do, then I have no choice but to live with it, but I'll be a monkey's uncle if I'm going to stop fighting for my real rights just because the State grants me a privilege to legally utilize a small portion of those rights.
Where we often disagree is on how to wage the war. We've been winning battles, some small and some large, making progress for some time. Some people think it's time to fight the big battle over letting us carry anything anywhere we want. Others think that the risk of losing that battle is high and that losing there would jeopardize some of the gains we've already made as well as make it more difficult to win other, smaller battles.
I'm all for open carry. I've worked and carried in a state where OC was legal. I think it's great. But we're doing very well with baby steps. We are making progress.
We all know that many of the antis would love to ban civilian ownership of firearms. They don't have the power to do that and they know it. They may or may not realize that they would start a civil war if they somehow succeeded in passing such a law. But they do understand baby steps, divide and conquer, boil the frog slowly. They make more and more restrictions a little at a time until one day the semi-conscious population looks around and realizes no one can own guns.
We fight them at every turn and are called "radicals" for objecting to "common sense" gun laws because we know that every time we give them an inch, they try to take a mile. (Can I come up with any more cliche's to throw in that paragraph?
)We've been doing the same thing in the fight for our freedoms. Taking back, a little at a time, the rights which have been stolen from us. We are winning. Some people are afraid that a big push for something that may not be all that popular could turn public opinion against us and we'd be back to playing defense rather than pushing our offense forward.
Don't stop fighting, but pick your battles, and ally yourself with others for an organized push rather than a bunch of individual battles because there's strenght in numbers. We may not always agree with the battle plan, but sticking with the group and following the plan is working pretty good right now.
I do not mean to preach at tfrazier, let me make that clear. His post just gave me some ideas about what I wanted to say.