Toys in the Attic

Alternate title: Can you plagiarize yourself?

Over at Kevin’s place, there’s a storm brewing between the 2A absolutists and the pro-2A incrementalists. The 2A absolutists want nothing more than VT-style gun laws, and nothing short of that is good enough for them. The incrementalists see our progress as a good thing, with more to come; they point to the passing of the dreaded Asssault Weapons Ban, the “Stand Your Ground”/”Castle Doctrine”/etc. laws in various states, Protection of Lawful Commerce Act, and concealed carry passing in KS & NE.

These are all good points. Here’s the comment I made on the subject:

I try to stay out of these debates as a matter of course.

First off, I can see both sides of the issue. “Shall not be infringed” is pretty f’n clear, yet we’ve been dealing with all sorts of infringements over the past, oh, hundred plus years or so.

Secondly, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. You posted that excellent graphic showing the change in laws, and it’s crystal clear that we’re making fantastic progress. The absolutists cannot or will not see that we’re moving in the right direction. We’re not teleporting there instantly, we’re slowly plodding along. Tortoise and hare, that sort of thing.

Thirdly, as a “big picture” person (and a chess player), I see us gunnies as actually LOSING, and losing badly. While we celebrate NE and KS and brag about how RI and DE will most likely switch from “may issue” to “shall issue”, the nanny-statists are quietly hiking up the minimum age for hunters, air-brushing guns out of cartoons, and ear-brushing (my term) all references to guns out of popular culture (witness the horrible editing of “Born to be Wild” in the recent “Herbie” release).

Add to that “zero tolerance” policies; overzealous pediatricians asking about guns in the house; “safe storage” laws; etc. and it all adds up to a generation of children completely ignorant of firearms. I’m afraid to show my son my guns, because if he goes into school the next day and tells his friends, he gets a suspension, I get a visit from the cops, and a shiny new file gets created with Youth Services.

So, we win the battle yet lose the war. While we slap ourselves on the back in an orgy of celebration over new CCW laws, the anti-gunnies bide their time, knowing that in a generation or two they can take it all back and then some. When our numbers have dwindled to that of, oh, say, smokers, we’re going to get crushed. Hard.

(Damn, us “big picture” chess players are quite the downer, eh?)

It’s hard for me to get all worked up over this debate, frankly. Sure, I believe, as do the 2A absolutists, that “Shall not be infringed” is what we should be striving for. VT-style CCW laws should be the NORM, not the statistical outlier. If someone is clear to own guns, they should be clear to legally carry guns. Unless and until they show themselves to be unworthy of exercising their Second Amendment rights, they should be allowed free and unfettered access to arms, both in ownership and in carriage.

HOWEVER… I am pragmatic. It took us a long time (~ 150 years) to get where we are now. From the Jim Crow laws that first sought to strip arms from specific (read: black) members of society, to the Federal Firearms Act of 1934 (Rather than admit that Prohibition was an abysmal failure, let’s ban machine guns) to present day, we have allowed our government to infringe on our second amendment rights very nearly to the point of them being moot.

And now we are starting to reclaim that territory. Bully for us. As shortly as 10 years ago, more than 1/3 of the US (17 states) had NO provision for concealed carry whatsoever (interesting side note: When I first got my MA gun permit, TX did not have concealed carry). Almost half (24) were “May Issue”, meaning that you have to have a compelling reason for wanting a permit to carry concealed weapons. Some areas are de facto “Shall Issue”, some are de facto “NO issue”. Only eight states were “Shall Issue”, meaning that if you met all requirements and had no record, you were granted a permit. Only one state (VT) had no requirements. Today, only two states forbid concealed carry entirely (WI & IL); there are only nine “May Issue” states (CA, HI, IA, MA, MD, NJ, NY, DE, & RI); 37 states are “Shall Issue”, and AK joined VT in requiring no permit whatsoever. (Stats pulled from this post at Kim’s).

This is good. This can only be good. In every single state that changed from “No Issue” to “Shall Issue”, every single prediction made by the anti-gun lobby was proven false: No blood ran in the streets. People were not shot for the slightest provocation. Traffic accidents did not lead to extended gun battles. Crime decreased rather than increased.

But… I still stand by my dire prognosis that this will all be meaningless in a generation or two. While the laws are changing in our favor, the atmosphere is not. Guns are a forbidden topic. Gun owners chased underground. Hunting ages subtly raised “for the children” to stealthily keep kids from developing a healthy attitude towards firearms. Hollywood is doing its part (just off the top of my head, the revised “ET” with walkie-talkies instead of guns or the aformentioned scrubbing of “Born to be Wild” come to mind) to insure that children grow up completely ignorant of firearms. School mascots, for crying out loud, are either disarmed or changed completely.

As less and less people take an interest in the shooting sports, there will be fewer and fewer to continue the fight. I cannot imagine that this is sheer coincidence – that we’re making major inroads with only token resistance from the anti-gunnies. Not without paying a price – the culture war. Which we are losing, quite handily, without even firing a shot.

And that price is our future.

I don’t think anyone that lived through the sixties through now can deny that we’ve seen a major erosion in second amendment freedom. Tam at View From The Porch posted a major bitch-slap to some moron claiming that guns are NOW easier to get than ever before:

In 1933, you could send money to Sears and buy a machine gun through the mail, with no questions asked.

In 1967, a fifteen year-old could walk into a hardware store and, showing no ID other than some pictures of Andrew Jackson and filling out no paperwork other than the warranty card, walk out with the handgun of his choice. The only background check might have been the proprietor asking “Is this for you or your dad, Bobby?”

In 1986 a teen could walk into a sporting goods store in a mall and buy a semiautomatic rifle and five hundred rounds of ammunition after filling out one small form and undergoing no background check, and walk her purchase out through the mall, no questions asked.

In 1994 you could drive to Georgia from Tennessee and buy the scariest-looking riot shotgun on the rack with your photo ID and, again, no background check.

In 2006, to buy a simple single-shot .22 rifle, of the type used to teach gun safety and marksmanship to Cub Scouts, here in the gun-friendly state of Tennessee, you must show current photo ID, the address on which must match your current residence address. You must fill out a page and a half of a big tri-fold form, and then wait for the seller to fill out the rest. You must wait while an invasive background check is performed on you and the serial numbers of the gun (even if brand new) are checked to make sure it is not stolen. You must give your thumbprints, for Vishnu’s sake.

…and this, this is “more easily available.”

I won’t even get into the changes I have seen in MA during my time as a gun owner here.

So more states allow concealed carry. That’s good. Repeal 15,000 or so extraneous, unenforced, and unConstitutional gun laws and I’ll start to reconsider my dire outlook. Bring back Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd, “Pistol Pete”, and all the other mascots who have been disarmed or changed in the interest of political correctness. Let the next San Francisco style gun ban be laughed out of the ballot box rather than voted into law.

Until then, I remain pessimistic as to the future of the second amendment.