Winning

Kevin of Smallest Minority talks about "Why we're winning"

Basically it comes down to passion and organization. People are less interested in being told from some top-down masters to work at taking away rights.

Where gun owners are very passionate about keeping, and expanding, what they have. Gun owners also can see how easy it is to have their rights trampled.

There's a lesson in that.

As for how much we're winning, the passage of Shall Issue in Iowa (Jan 1 2011) got me thinking.

With Iowa that's 40 states that are Shall Issue or Unrestricted for handguns.

Now that's 80% of the states, but I wondered what the percentage of the US population was.

Since there are two big states (Cali and NY) that are quite restrictive. NY for example you can't own a handun at all unless you have CCW which depending on the county you live in is extremely difficult to you need "connections" difficult.

So I crunched some numbers. Based on a total US population of around 281 million, the 40 states in question have a population of 187 million: 66.5%

So two thirds of the US population live in states where if you want to carry a handgun for defensive use, the state cannot restrict it unless you are a felon or mentaly dangerous.


That's progress. Especially when you consider this chart, also from Smallest Minority.

Ten states left.

Top # States % Shall Issue
By Population or Unrestricted.
5............40
10............60
20............65
25............72
50............80

Once you get out of the top five most populous states you get a majority with Shall Issue or Unrestricted.


Granted the last 10 will be tought nuts to crack, but progress is being made.
Also the map shows that it's been a matter of under two decades. Rights need to be excercised and having more people actively defending themselves helps make it more difficult to move against them.


And more progress on reciprocity would be real good too. Would make interstate travel easier.