Miguel and I have both covered the panic being experienced in New York by the possibility that President Trump might enact the Holy Grail of gun rights laws: national concealed carry.  A complete repeal of the NFA being the Ark of the Covenant of guns rights.

Not to be outdone, the LA Times had to opine why national reciprocity would be a disaster in “with Trump’s victory, the NRA takes aim at public safety.”  Being the LA Times, you can be assured that this editorial was reasonable and unbiased… or not.

First sentence:

The extremely powerful but highly irresponsible National Rifle Assn. spent $30 million this year helping elect Donald J. Trump and $10 million more backing six pro-gun Senate candidates (five of whom won).

Highly irresponsible NRA.  The LA Times is just another organization that lays every gun death at the feet of the NRA.  That there are millions of law abiding gun owners who don’t commit crimes on a daily basis and don’t want their rights restricted because of the actions of a tiny minority of people doesn’t matter.  It’s not some gang member or petty criminal that is irresponsible.  It’s the NRA.

The NRA’s president, Wayne LaPierre, has already released a video statement trumpeting the victory, patting gun owners on the back for making it possible and calling for a renewed push to dismantle state and local gun-control laws. “Our time is now,” LaPierre said. “This is our historic moment to go on offense.” 

After the Brady Bill, AWB, and countless local and state gun bans, in which gun owners had their rights taken away and told it was “a compromise.”  No more “be lucky we’re not being more restrictive than this” definition of compromise.  It is time we go on the offensive and start taking back our rights.  I want my cake back.

At the top of LaPierre’s wish list is an absurd and dangerous federal law to require any state that issues permits for carrying concealed weapons to recognize similar permits issued by other states, even if they have different eligibility and training requirements and even if they have less stringent restrictions on gun ownership. Proponents of so-called concealed-carried reciprocity equate it with state driver’s licenses, which are recognized nationwide. But that’s a false comparison. All states follow similar standards for issuing driver’s licenses, and basic vehicle and traffic laws are largely standardized. That’s not so for gun laws, which vary widely by state, not to mention that county and city governments are allowed to enact their own restrictions based on local needs and preferences.

Let me be technical here: BULLSHIT!!!

The basics of concealed carry is like the basics of driving.  If you know how to operate a car and the basic rules of the road, driving in LA is not too different than driving elsewhere in the country.  The purpose of having a relatively common standard for drivers licenses is to make sure that drivers have a basic knowledge and competency of how to handle a vehicle.

The rules on gun safety, knowing what places are prohibited, etc. are roughly the same state to state, e.g. can’t carry in a school, government building,  parade/public demonstration, etc.  If you know these, there is very little practical difference between carrying in Los Angeles or New York as there is carrying in Miami, Dallas, or Indianapolis.  In theory, a CCW permit should be like a drivers licence.

In practicality it is not.   Various states place more restrictions on CCW, not for safety, but because they want to make prohibitively difficult to get a permit and keep the numbers of CCW permits low.

This is not the same as drivers licences.  Let’s try that thought experiment.  LA has some of the most congested roads in the country.  So hypothetically, LA wants to cut down on traffic.  The City and County of LA uses its influence to change CA state law making it necessary to show “good cause” for getting a drivers licence.  Just wanting to be able to drive to work doesn’t count.  You have to have a business that requires driving, like if you are a contractor and you have a truck, then you can get a drivers licence but only for the purposes of doing your job.  To get this licence requires 100 hours of drivers ed and an 4 hour drivers test on the LA freeways.  How many people would get that licence in CA?  Presumably a much smaller percentage of potential drivers than have CA drivers licences now.  Of course, drivers licences from the other 49 states are no longer recognized in CA so visitors and tourists can’t drive into the state or rent a car when they fly in.

Well that is what CA and other states have done with CCW.

Utah’s limited restrictions have made the issuance of concealed-carry permits something of a cottage industry for the state. Two-thirds of Utah’s 632,276 permits as of the end of last year were in the hands of nonresidents.

By comparison, California — with 33 times Utah’s population — has only 79,834 active concealed-carry permits, according to the state attorney general’s office. Among other things, California has a more stringent training regimen and requires a person seeking a permit to show good-cause for needing to carry a concealed weapon.

The whole point of CA’s CCW system is to make sure that regular Californians can’t carry in the state.

A California resident could simply apply for a permit from Utah and start walking around Los Angeles with a hidden handgun, no matter what California voters and lawmakers say.

Damn those flyover country bumpkins, and their civil rights.  We can’t allow that type of rifraf in our State acting like free citizens.

It’s not like Los Angeles, or most of CA for that matter, hasn’t spent the last few year thumbing its nose at Federal immigration or drug laws because of CA lawmakers.  Violating the Constitutional right to keep AND BEAR arms is just old hat by this point.  If it were up to CA, all Federal law and the Bill of Rights would have some fine print added to it that says “Void in the State of California.”

Makes me wonder: If states can legalize Marijuana which requires a federal tax stamp to posess in the state, can a Red State do the same for NFA items?  I wan’t some brand new full auto legalized in my state, regarless of what the ATF says.

In its 2008 Heller decision (which we think was wrongly decided), the Supreme Court ruled that the 2nd Amendment confers on individuals the right to own a gun for protection in the home.

Yep, the Editorial board of the LA Times overrules the Supreme Court.  Got forbid some flyover knuckle draggers thing that SCOTUS make up a right in Roe v. Wade, they are ignorant misogynists.  But if SCOUTS reads the 2A and believes that actually applies to the people, we can’t have that.

Reasonable minds in Congress need to head this off before the NRA and its legislative acolytes make American even more dangerous by undercutting reasonable gun controls.

Bah!   We want to keep California a slave state, and if we can’t, we’ll secede.  Long live the Confederated Counties of California.  Disarmament Today.  Disarmament Tomorrow, Disarmament FOREVER!