Arizona has become the third state to eliminate the need to have a permit to carry a concealed gun. Now, you can pack a gun without a permit in Arizona, Alaska, and Vermont.
Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law which will take effect 90 days after the current legislative session ends — sometime in August. She stated “I believe this legislation not only protects the Second Amendment rights of Arizona citizens, but restores those rights as well.”
Under the prior law, carrying a hidden firearm without a permit was a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and up to a $2,500 fine.
Two states — Illinois and Wisconsin — prohibit all concealed weapons.
For the full story, click here.
Gyges,
Thank-you for the great clip.
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Jdog,
IMHO men who need to walk around with their gun AKA strap on penis extender, are just like little children, who need to play dress up to decrease their fear and anxiety – they are too terrified of the world outside their window, they can no longer leave their homes without their gun.
Poor dupes, they have lost all confidence and probably feel so much more vulnerable, naked really whenever they can’t carry.
Jdog,
I’m guessing it’s because guns are terrible at putting out fires.
Thanks for the excuse to post this though.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDDpk6J526c&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]
Well, let’s see: I don’t work for any gun manufacturer; I do, though, conduct carry classes in Minnesota for people who want to carry guns in public here. (I generally advise folks to carry concealed, rather than openly. Some people, for some reason, seem to go absolutely batshit at the sight of a gun in a holster, unless it’s in the holster of somebody in a uniform.)
That any help?
I’m certainly not advocating drinking and carrying anymore than I’d advocate in favor of drinking and driving. That said, when I go out to dinner with my wife, I may well have a glass of wine with dinner, and drive (and carry) home, later. Perfectly lawful in my state; the .BAC limit while carrying in public is .04 here.
And if you stagger by and attempt to start some sort of argument, I’ll politely decline.
jdog:
“Ah. The old “this law will turn bar fights into shootouts” meme. We’ve heard that before, about all the loosening of handgun carry restrictions, in the vast majority of states.
Please, don’t stop taking your vitamin C until this starts happening; scurvy is unflattering.”
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Ah, the old “Guns Don’t Kill People; People Kill People” meme. We’ve heard that before.
Fact is alcohol plays a major causative role in most forms of violence as DOJ stats have clearly shown. Here’s the basic facts about the violence-alcohol linkage that you easily and naively dismiss:
http://www.marininstitute.org/alcohol_policy/violence.htm#1
To suggest, it won’t raise the chances of violence at liquor serving restaurants and bars is, well, shooting your mouth off.
Which gun manufacturer do you work for? And, by the way, please don’t stop taking your Lithium there, Wyatt Earp, so you won’t shoot us with your concealed non-permitted weapon at our local saloon. Yahoo!!
Jdog is willing to have intersection and home shoot outs regardless of collateral damage.
Sure. Just as you’re willing to have people murdered or assaulted because they’re not legally permitted to carry a firearm for self-defense. How many senseless deaths from that are you willing to allow to prevent the rare — not quite mythical, perhaps, but hard to find — intersection and home shoot outs by otherwise law-abiding folks? How is having a handgun for self-defense “paranoia” when owning a fire extinguisher isn’t?
Legislators who enact these laws should be required to pay the funeral expenses of the people who die as a result.
“I am not saying there is causation….”
Then why posit such an unproveable statement since we both know there are dozens of simultaneous contributing factors.
“However, could some of you at least admit that giving people the right to defend themselves and their loved ones has not lead to disaster”?
In your mind, how many senseless gun deaths of children, hunters and spouses does it take to make it a disaster? Several hundred or a few thousand per year not enough for you? For me it’s ONE. Jdog is willing to have intersection and home shoot outs regardless of collateral damage.
What is it about gun owners that makes life so cheap and meaningless? How much childhood bullying or parental abuse does it take to create this need to get even or the paranoia for these gun worshipers? Is it the same deficiancy as that which feeds the need to own a bright yellow Corvette? Whatever it is, it isn’t normal human behavior.
Most of the idiotic emotional appeals have been dealt with so I leave the panicky folk with the same thing I always say and they never hear:
The number of states allowing concealed carry has gone through the roof in the last two decades. During the same span, violent crime has gone through the floor. I am not saying there is causation; I do not believe the evidence is there. However, could some of you at least admit that giving people the right to defend themselves and their loved ones has not lead to disaster? That the simple formula “more guns and more concealed carriers = more crime” has been demolished?
“When Janet Napolitano was selected as Sec’y HLS, the Republican Lt. Gov., Jan Brewer was elevated and she and the GOP-led state legislature went on a gun crazy rampage.”
Leaving aside the hyperbole, as I recall, Gov. Napolitano vetoed quite a few bills involving gun laws. So one might argue that Gov. Brewer is signing bills that reflect the (long-standing) will of the people as reflected by the make-up of the legislature. The good news for those Arizonans who are not happy: elections occur regularly.
(And, for what its worth: Arizona does not have a Lt. Gov. and did not have one when Gov. Napolitano quit her job.)
I have a good friend, former LEO, now retired, who visited a public restroom in a large store. For comfort or safety … I’m not sure which, he took his gun out of its holster and laid it on a tray that was under the mirror but over the sink. He finished his elimination business, again not certain if he was standing or sitting for such business, washed his hands and left.
He forgot to take his gun.
When he realized his error, he returned to the store but the gun was no longer in the restroom. Thankfully someone, not a child, had seen the gun on the tray in the restroom and reported it to the store’s management. The gun was in the store’s office.
The story made the papers in this small town and, as one can imagine, the community is incensed.
rcampbell — of course I feel awful about the very few individuals whose lives are lost because somebody who legally possessed a gun did something wrong, just as I’m sure that you’re all shaken up about those whose lives are lost because they were prevented by law from possessing a firearm to defend themselves.
In two of the sorts of instances you cite — road rage and domestic violence — in fact, people have been killed because they were unable to defend themselves from their attackers. It’s difficult for me to reconcile your apparently contempt for their tragedies.
…misbehavior by people lawfully entitled to carry guns is small enough that it could be lost in a rounding error…”
I’m sure that’s very comforting solace to the families of the victims of the “rounding errors” caused by the occassional “misbehavior”.
It’s very difficult for me to reconcile Jdog’s (and other gun owners’) contempt for life in the pursuit of guns. There must be something terribly wrong with people that they can be so cryptic, so cynical about life, but have a much deeper affection for the guns that take those lives. If the gun deaths of human beings from domestic violence, road rage, children playing with guns, hunting accidents etc. or so easily dismissed as “misbehavior”, I can muster only contempt for guns and their owners.
Texans are safe. They will not be in session until Jan 2011….
Ah. The old “this law will turn bar fights into shootouts” meme. We’ve heard that before, about all the loosening of handgun carry restrictions, in the vast majority of states.
Please, don’t stop taking your vitamin C until this starts happening; scurvy is unflattering.
“Sensible people in Arizona will still get training in both the use of firearms and the very (and appropriately, IMHO) strict legal limitations on their use for self-defense.”
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“Sensible people” rarely find themselves across the “v” on a criminal indictment. The law may protect us all, but it does so, in most cases, from(,/i> the senseless types. The sad fact is that the law will change precisely when enough people,including law enforcement, are killed or maimed during bar fights by hidden guns. Then the “sensible” members of the legislature, their faces firmly coated with egg, will act. Too late though, for all the dead sensible and senseless people. No fallen sky, of course, just a lot of avoidable misery.
The sky in Arizona, of course, will now fall.
More seriously, if the experience in Alaska is any guide — and it should be — this change will only make a difference to those who would have been deterred from carrying by the cost and time required to take a carry permit class. Right now, upwards of forty states allow carrying of concealed weapons by most law-abiding adults — in the majority, including my own Minnesota, it’s required to get a permit first — and misbehavior by people lawfully entitled to carry guns is small enough that it could be lost in a rounding error.
Sensible people in Arizona will still get training in both the use of firearms and the very (and appropriately, IMHO) strict legal limitations on their use for self-defense.
Dredd,
Do you know what I hate the most about other people with dogs? It’s when they let their dogs go on my front yard and leave their brown gifts all over and their owners do nothing to pick them up.
Well, it’s same with you that I hate the most… always coming into other people’s blog and leaving links to their blogs which have nothing to do with the content at hand.
Stop posting meaningless brown gifts!
raff
I live in AZ about half the year (CA the balance). The crime rate has little or nothing to do with this ridiculous legislation. It comes on the heels of recent authorization to allow concealed weapons in BARS. When Janet Napolitano was selected as Sec’y HLS, the Republican Lt. Gov., Jan Brewer was elevated and she and the GOP-led state legislature went on a gun crazy rampage. I don’t know enough about her or state politics to know whether the legislature is leading her around by the nose or if she’s fully complicit.
They’ve also recently passed legislation to give local police federal authority to stop and demand citizenship papers of anyone they suspect of being an illegal. No probable cause necessary in AZ, just looking Hispanic is enough in this state with millions of native born people of Hispanic origins.
Going further, I hear people rooting against John McCain’s current run for the GOP nomination to return to the Senate. Given the obvious conservative leanings here, those misguided anti-McCain sentiments could lead to the nomination and election of teabagger sympathizer and lunatic fringe adherent, JD Hayworth. The Dems really don’t have a strong candidate for Senate.
Iceland is following suit because it had and has several weapons underneath its ice sheet clothing …
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/04/earth-now-has-toyota-gas-peddle.html
I am glad that I live in Illinois! I would imagine that the crime rate has gone down in Arizona and Alaska and Vermont with the citizens able to hide their guns?! Right? Kudos to Wisconsin, by the way for not allowing concealed weapons.