False Hypothetical
Laura Washington asks, “Do you want to be standing in line for gas, popcorn or a gallon of milk and find yourself next to someone who’s packing heat?”
It’s not a hypothetical, darling. It’s an everyday situation in all 50 states. In 48 of those states, the person next to you might be a legal carrier, going about his daily routine in a normal law abiding manner.
In the other two, he is a criminal. You are in the state where he is certainly a criminal, while most of the rest of us are surrounded by law-abiding gun carriers every day.
If I carry a tape measure on my person it doesn’t necessarily follow that I’m going to go around measuring things all the livelong day. Sheesh!
[…] Phelpsy Welpsy: It’s not a hypothetical, darling. […]
… but if I was packing a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning. And in the evening. And all over the motherfucking land.
I sent Ms. Washington and email. Surprisingly, she responded. The response wasn’t surprising, just the fact that she bothered. I’ll post both my piece and hers tonight when I get home.
I think you should send yours along to her, too. It’s excellent.
So it’s up to 48 now? (A few years ago, I had heard 46.)
I wish my state would join the rest.
Yup, Illinois and Wisconsin are the only holdouts. IIRC, 16 of those states are some form of “may issue”, where you have to get someone’s approval, 30 are “shall issue” where they have to issue it uniformly based on the state code, and 2 of the states require no licensing at all (Alaska and Vermont.)
This is the best graphic out there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rtc.gif
The blue states are the “shall issue” states, green is no license, yellow is “may issue” and red is “no issue.”