Right to Keep AND Bear Arms.

The spread of Shall Issue Conceal Carry to the vast majority of the United States gives a major leg up on Second Ammendment Issues.

Or to be more accurate, it removes a huge hurdle in talking about and justifying RKBA. Take a country with extremely restrictive carry issue like Canada or pre-97 England or so forth.

In those countries (at the time) handguns were/are legal. But the common person could not carry them for self defense. Thus a primary use was eliminated. Hell Canada has a limitation on how short a handgun's barrel can be. Can't have something that someone might try to conceal.

And when the anti's reared their heads, and took advantage of blood in the streets they went "Well why do you need X? X is dangerous! It's only purpose is to murder!"

And answers like sport, hunting, collectiability, and "Because I damn well want to you intrusive harpy," are all valid. Though the Anti's will retort with "But it's designed to kill! It's a weapon!"

And if the State has banned carry and self defense, then well, the subject cannot reply with: "So what? Damn straight X is designed to kill(while also be carried on a person's body). Not all killing is wrong or even illegal."

Removing self defense turns firearms from a right to just a hobby. Yes, most of us gunnies consider them both. However, it's far far easier to regulate out of existence (or regulate down to just the "right people") a hobby than it is a right.

Especially if the hobby can be demonized as dangerous and fringe, instead of being a constitutional right.

This is why the Anti's used to say they supported "Hunters and Sportsmen" but not those Assault Weapons and High Capacity Clips. But now to now where they're forced to give lip service to self defense. It shows how far we've gone that the anti's have to say things like that.

Then again they used to say a lot of things. Miguel documents a bit of the history of the Brady Campaign or as they used to be called the National Council to Ban Handguns.

The goal's never changed though. As Miguel quotes their three step plan: 1 hamper sales of new handguns as much as possible, 2 get a national registry, 3 "make the possession of all handguns, and all handgun ammunition totally illegal".

And they know that expanding gun ownership is death to their organization, because the more people that are exposed to firearms the more their lies are exposed.

But a registry won't ever be abused! Read the rest of Miguel's post to get a reminder of ow the Anti's work.

It also helps that there's very plain text in the Constitution backing up our stance.

And some more info on the Second Amendment via Linoge.

The US is standing as a country where nearly 3/4 of the population is able to purchase and carry a handgun for no other reason than they want to.

And the State (assuming fees, training and non felon which is a whole other ball of wax) is forced to oblige them. And in many locations this has been going on for decades. And more and more states are becoming Shall Issue. Oh and there was no blood in the streets, no spike in crime.

I'm not sure the Anti's are able to comprehend the magnitude of what that means for their cause.

In most of the US the common citizen can go about their day armed, if they so wish, and use said arm to defend themselves. No being part of the "special class" or needing to "know a guy". Any law-abiding citizen. 41 States, 70% of the population.

That also underscores how fundamentally unfair May Issue regimes are. Because their whole reason for existence is to prohibit rights to otherwise qualified petitioners. If New York or New Jersey or Massachusetts or California or Canada or Italy really cared about equality before the law you'd think they'd treat all applicants for conceal carry equally, no?