I wrote this for somewhere else but after
reading some response, thought I would share:
Quite often, people ask the group how they can get a CHL or CCW/permit in a given location. Sometimes they ask if they should get one at all.
Usually the group supplies the appropriate info or links for the question.
However, there are usually a wave of negative responses that go like this:
1. If you get such, you will be on the Government list and when
the time comes, the UN, black heliocopters, etc. will come for you and your gun.
2. You are some sort of liberal, commie coward. GAWD ALMIGHY and the Second Amendment give you the right to carry a gun.
Only a wussy-ass wimp would bother to get a permit. You are giving up your RIGHTS.
3. Hermeneutic analyses by me (the poster) or by a team of Talmudic scholars has determined that despite the opinion of everyone else
in the state and the recommendations of LEOs, AGs, instructors, etc.,some nuance in state law gives you the right to carry. We
have recently seen a thread with this particular idiocy (comment here is about another list - GM).
This is combined with the listers suggestion that you be the one to use his or her brilliant but amateur analysis in court.
To be rather blunt: These reasons are well-intentioned but misguided or
malacious bull****.
Here's why you should get a permit or CHL.
1. You can carry legally. While some states have certain restrictions,you are certainly more legal than those who carry illegally.
a. This reduces the chance of arrest. Jail, expense, a record, losing
gun rights for the future.
b. This reduces the chance of going through a felony stop. Most
police think people who carry illegally are bad. The police are not going to give you a donut and yell - Three Cheers for the RKBA. They might treat you badly.
c. When challenged by the police, there are suggested routines for the licensed carrier to do, to avoid conflict. As unlicensed, you can't. As a CHL holder, I can tell the officer that I have a gun
in the glove compartment. Most everyone I know in TX has found that most officers are polite and deal well with the CHL. If I don't have the CHL and I tell the officer I have a gun - expect handcuffs at the
minimum. In the worst case scenarios, guns are draw on you when the gun is
discovered. You might get hurt or dead.
d. When you are arrested for illegal carry, you become an official gun nut. Does this influence your job? It might. You have to report such on some job applications. For some professions, you might get the boot.
Hey - DON'T BE A WUSSY - ! Fight it! I'm sure a post to the group will bring LOT'S O CASH for your defense fund! Sure.
2. The Government is coming for you.
There are guy is Texas who everything they see the Good Humour ice cream
truck post to TX.guns that the UN is in Bastrop and are coming for your guns.
I agree that gun registration is a tool that might be used to seize guns and that precedents exist for this action.
However, most of us are probably on the lists already.
Are you a member of a major gun related organization?
Did you ever subscribe to a gun periodical?
Get a hunting license?
Buy a related product with a credit card?
Post on the Internet about firearms.
They gotcha - big boy.
If the confiscation order comes down, will you neighbors and co-workers turn you in? I could name several people who would do that, either as they are anti-gun, would want a reward or are malacious. I've been there on this one. I once knew pretty well a major figure in a world class scandal. Even though, it was several years before said person engaged in the behavior, several
idiots at work called the local press to tell them I knew the person and I had to fend off the press for awhile. I'm sure lots of folks would turn you in given the right circumstances.
If the list is real big - maybe they won't come for everyone on the list.
3. Breaking the law is a bad role model. How can you argue for law and order if you argue to break it? You say you are justified by the RKBA mission given to you by GAWD ALMIGHTY.
Never criticize those who commit illegal actions pro or con abortion, marijuana, the Viet Nam war, cocaine, pornography or the like.
If HCI surrounds the gun store and pelts you with eggs when you exit, don't bother to call the police - they were following a high moral
cause.
Are there some higher moral causes that lead one to break the law as the Freedom Riders did in the South in the fight against
segregation?
Be sure you are OK with this before you go the route of civil disobedience.
If you do, shouldn't you have a public display of your civil disobedience
or do you just slink around with your gun hidden?
4. Getting a CHL increases the probability you will carry and increases your
safety. Despite the blowhard friends of GAWD ALMIGHTY who claim that they break the law - I doubt it. Being illegal would give you pause.
Be legal and carrying is no longer fearful and becomes second nature.
Given the success rate of gun armed self defense - you make yourself safer.
When some 'Vermont only' activist argues against CHL laws - think about
this. We want people to carry to be safe. Lott says 4000 women a year prevent rape with handguns. Thus, we need the RKBA to be able to have guns to prevent crimes like rape. If you don't allow carry you allow rape.
The "Vermont only" or "2 Amend. gives us the right..." crowd would argue against passage of CHL laws. This will decrease the number of
people who will carry. It will keep in force anticarry laws. More women will get raped while you wait for GAWD ALMIGHTY or the next
revolution to turn the USA into Vermont.
5. The Benefits of CHL for the RKBA outweigh the confiscation list risk.
a. Take a stand and show the world that Americans wish to carry arms
to defend themselves. If every gun owner that could, would get a CHL - such numbers would convince politicians that this is a mass movement and opinion to be reckoned with.
Gun folks are being marginalized as right wing loons, animal blasters and other low lifes who slink around in the dark, wearing Nazi shirts. Appeals to break the law, just reinforce this.
I read a similar analysis by several other folks in various editiorial sources, like Mike Venturino.
I suppose I take a risk in being legally licensed. The UN might come for me. But, I take that chance. I demonstrate that I want
and need to possess a firearm.
In other situations when discriminatory laws and propositions were put on state ballots, I joined with other psychologists in signing
ads that were put in the major newspapers. Some people said aren't you scared that loonies might come for you? You take your chances.
In Denmark, the King put on a yellow Star of David and defied the Nazis. You can slink around without a CHL and wait for the UN
or you can say that you are a legal gunowner, want to carry and not be scared to let the world know it.
b. CHLs stop crime. This is convincingly demonstrated by Kleck and Lott.
This is the only argument that convinces centrist folks who may be convinced to be anti-RKBA.
Reading survey work, some survey work I've done and talking to non-gun folk lead me to believe that the center is starting to believe that guns are a priori dangerous and removing them will make them safer.
They DON'T CARE about 2nd Amend. arguments. The Bill of Rights was written by people and not by God. The authors thought such rights made for a better society. They can be changed if the US populace want it to happen. Another series of loonies shooting up the church and school and you could easily see suggestions to do away with the 2nd. This could happen if you lose the political center. The political center thinks that the argument that we need guns to fight a possible government tyranny is so farfetched that they laugh at it.
While we have hideous examples of Nazi German and Bosnia around, most Americans don't think that we will come to this and have to fight our government. Given most of the Nazi stuff is on sale at gun shows - it's kind of a hard argument to make.
THE SAFETY ARGUMENT SELLS. CHLs are part of it. It sells to women.
6. To follow up on the last sentence. WOMEN are the future of the RKBA.
Unless the centrist women are convinced that guns will make them and their families safer, they will support increasing numbers of gun control laws.
The left-over sexist attitudes and correlation of the RKBA with extremist causes turn off this population. Black heliocopter, UN phobia and preparing to fight the government just turns them off. The argument that makes sense is the CHL for self-defense. An argument to carry illegally will go nowhere. They fear lawbreakers - so you are arguing that folks should break the law and carry deadly weapons?
That's brillant.
7. SHALL CARRY LAWS ARE THE ONLY
RECENT PROACTICE SUCCESS FOR THE RKBA.
Defensive actions of holding off some worse gun laws are fine but if you are only on the defense you lose. The CHL laws are an
undeniable success. Shove that in the face of your opponents rather than arguing that we should be lawbreakers.
** The Ultimate Question**
To conclude this little exercise, I want to know if the folks who argue against permit laws and who tell folks to carry illegally
actually do. Every damn day, do you put on an IWB and cocked and locked 1911 and interact with friends, coworkers and police?
Does your significant other do it also? Do you do it in large urban environments like Dallas or just in the outdoors?
Do you do it in the supermarket? Do you take this risk?
Do you also verbally expouse this behavior in a medium other than the anonymity of the Internet? I can tell folks that I carry a gun
for protection and that I have gone through appropriate training and checks. I can tell them why it is a good idea for them to do it.
Can you tell everybody that you are a lawbreaker? So where is your responsible and not bull**** portrayal of the RKBA?
Flame on!