Addled Critics Unable to Form Logical Opposition to Thune's Concealed Carry Reciprocity Amendment

The so-called "Thune Amendment" to provide co-equal reciprocity to concealed carry permit holders traveling across state lines will come to a vote today.

The Amendment would allow concealed carry permit holders to carry their guns in the 48 states that allow some form of concealed carry (Illinois and Wisconsin do not allow for concealed carry in any form). Permit holders would still be responsible for knowing and following all applicable laws of the individual states they visit regarding concealed carry.

Opponents of the amendment have gone for the usual hysteria, insisting that such a bill would mean blood flowing in the streets.

That sort of hyperbole and fear-mongering is of course unfounded.

There are legitimate reasons one could cite to oppose the bill, such as concerns over how Alaska and Vermont residents—which are allowed to carry concealed weapons without any sort of a permit—would be accommodated. There are legitimate reasons to question the public safety of allowing people who come from states that provide permits without any training to travel anywhere. There are also questions about whether such a bill tramples on states' rights.

Those questions need to be answered, and I suspect they reasonably can be.

By the protests sounded by many of those opposing this bill aren't based upon any sort of logical thought process. They trumpet only unreasoning fear:

"If you walk down the street in New York ... you can have the solace of knowing that if someone has a gun on them they've gone through a rigorous police background check. After this bill, you can have no such comfort," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday.

Shumer is dishonest. If someone is carrying a gun in New York City, they are either a criminal or politically connected, with very, very few exceptions, and it is only slightly less difficult to carry upstate. Being a well-trained, responsible, law-abiding citizen isn't enough to get a carry permit in New York City, you need political connections, or if you are a normal citizen, you have to demonstrate need—as if a citizen can foretell in advance when someone might attempt to carjack, rob, or rape them. Even then, permitting is an altogether arbitrary process subject to whim as much as process.

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg was no more logical:

It could be drunks stumbling out of saloons packing heat that leads to another OK Corral. Or a bump on the subway that turns into a quick-draw shootout.

And the cops can't do anything about it until it's too late.

Those are some of the nightmare scenarios an agitated Mayor Bloomberg said could unfold on city streets if the Senate doesn't kill a "terrible piece of legislation."

The controversial measure says that as long as you're legal to pack heat in one state, you're A-OK to carry a concealed gun anywhere you travel in the U.S.

The proposal, an amendment coming up for a vote today, "is just an out-and-out trampling of historic states' rights," Bloomberg said in a reference to New York's tough laws against concealed guns.

"This bill is an anti-police, pro-gun-trafficker bill. This is going to put a lot more guns on the street," Bloomberg said on a conference call with several other mayors who warned their streets could also become war zones.

As Bloomberg should know, carrying a firearm in New York City would still be prohibited even when the Thune Amendment passes; it only apply to state laws, and local prohibitive ordinances such as NYC's would presumably still apply.

As for the Wild West hyperbole of shootouts on every street corner over the slightest offenses, well, that bit of dark fantasy has been debunked no less than 36 times. The same fear-mongering has been made in response to every state that implemented a concealed carry law, and the claims have always fallen flat.

Concealed carry permit holders are far less likely to commit a crime than the general population, and though there are millions of concealed carry permit holders in the United States—there are more than 1.4 million in Florida alone—the best that the anti-gun Violence Policy Center could do to suggest that concealed carry was dangerous was to point out 31 instances where concealed carry permit holders have been accused of violent crimes.

The VPC was so desperate to get even this scant amount of evidence that they were forced to include allegations of wrong-doing in cases that had not been adjudicated, cases that concealed weapons played little or no part in, and at least on case were no weapons at all were used.

Far from showcasing gun violence caused by concealed carry permit holders, the VPC report instead serves to show that carry permit holders as a group are far less violent that those citizens that are not licensed to carry firearms.

38 states allow concealed carry. 28 of them already have reciprocity laws that allow permit holders to carry in various states.

Thune's amendment is an attempt to add some consistency to an often confusing hodgepodge of state-mandated and constantly changing reciprocity agreements, while keeping every individual state restriction and concern in place about how and where guns can be carried within those states. It seeks nothing more or less than extending to law-abiding citizens the opportunity to follow the laws of another jurisdiction.

That hardly sounds like a situation that should earn the shrill hyperbole we're hearing from some politicians and media elitists.

But then, we aren't dealing with rational people.

Update: Why am I surprised that irrational fear wins in a Democrat-controlled Senate? The vote fell two votes shy (58-39) of the 60 needed.

And the victorious dolt speaks:

"Lives have been saved with the defeat of this amendment," Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, a leading opponent of the amendment, said in a statement. "The passage of this amendment would have done more to threaten the safety of New Yorkers than anything since the repeal of the assault weapons ban."

The ten year (1994-2004) "assault weapons" ban did not save one single life.

While 19 guns were banned by name, every single domestic manufacturer had variants of pre-ban guns on the street the day after the "ban" took effect, with no decrease in accurate, power, or rate of fire. Many manufacturers of assault weapons expanded their domestic sales during the ban due to high demand, and there were always plenty of these firearms legally available for sale on gun shop shelves.

The "ban" can fairly be credited with the creation of a new class of handguns, subcompact semi-automatics that packed duty-grade calibers (9mm, ..40S&W, .357 SIG, .45 ACP) into ever-smaller frames, so that far more powerful bullets can be launched from guns not appreciably larger that the low-powered and often ineffective &qout;mousegun" calibers of previous generations. If anything, a good case can be made that by making guns ever smaller and more powerful, the assault weapons ban encouraged people—both law-abiding citizens and violent criminals—to carry firearms more frequently.

How many homicides associated with this new class of weapon do you want credit for, Chuck?