U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- Politicians in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, California, Oregon, Washington, Chicago, and elsewhere, keep telling the world that their constituents – the people who elected them – are stupider, less responsible, less rational, less trustworthy, and more prone to violence than the people in other areas of the United States. And the voters in those states and jurisdictions keep reelecting them.
Is that proof that the politicians are right and their constituents are stupider than the rest of us out here in flyover country?
Twenty-five of the fifty states have enacted permitless, Constitutional Carry laws. Alaska started the trend in 2003 and Arizona and Wyoming followed suit seven years later. That’s a full half of the US states that now require no training, no special investigation, no fees, and no government permission slip for any adult (in most cases, over 21, but in some cases, persons over 18) to carry a loaded handgun concealed on their person in public. As a result, virtually everyone in those 25 states has been killed or seriously injured in road rage incidents, parking disputes, arguments with neighbors, impulsive suicides, and unintentional discharges.… Right?
The predicted bloodbaths didn’t happen, even though so many anti-rights politicians and gun control extremist groups warned that this would be the result in each state as each legislature debated the merits of adopting Constitutional Carry. They ignored the evidence of Vermont, Alaska, Arizona, and each of the states that followed their lead in adopting some version of the idea. They ignored the fact that, in Arizona, anyone from anywhere, who isn’t a convicted felon or otherwise prohibited from possession of a firearm, has always been able to put a loaded gun on their hip, as long as it, or its holster was visible, and since 2010, they’ve been able to legally conceal that gun and walk out the door, and still crime, suicides, and firearms stupidity didn’t shoot through the roof, but instead fell consistently until COVID and the riots of the “Summer of Love” started reversing an almost three-decade trend of declining violent crime.
States like Arizona were on the leading edge of the movement to recognize and restore rights, so there was some chance that the falling crime rates here were just some sort of weird aberration, and the results in other states would be different. But state after state adopted similar positions, and the results in state after state yielded similar results. In some places the data indicated that Constitutional Carry actually helped lower violent crime rates, but nowhere can it be said that adoption of Constitutional Carry produced any significant increase in any crime rates anywhere.
Now, with the clear evidence of 25 Constitutional Carry states, there’s no excuse for any politician to suggest calamitous results from liberalizing gun control laws. Still, that’s exactly what they do, over and over again.
In New York, when the Supreme Court ruled that their ridiculously strict and arbitrary permitting system for carrying a concealed gun was unconstitutional, Governor Kathy Hochul demanded, and got, new, even stricter laws for her constituents, indicating her belief that people in Vermont, Alaska, Arizona, and 22 other states, must be smarter, more responsible, more trustworthy, and less prone to violence than the people of her own state, whom she clearly believes are incapable of handling such responsibilities. Even though the people in all of those other states are able to safely and responsibly own and carry firearms without government mandates and supervision, she insists that her constituents would just start killing and wounding each other.
All I can conclude from her reelection is that she must be right, and the voters in her state must indeed be stupider than most. But then I look at my own state, where a slim majority of my fellow Arizonans just voted in a new governor who embraces the same sorts of elitist, government-knows-best, ideas that governor Hochul does, and I fear that there must be some sort of intelligence-sapping contagion going around, probably spread by legacy media. But at least Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s presumptive next Governor, hasn’t made a habit of telling Arizonans that we could never be trusted with the rights and responsibilities that the citizens of other states have proven to have no problem handling.
I recall a Wisconsin politician arguing against the liberalization of their gun laws, by pulling out statistics showing that Wisconsin residents consume more beer, per capita, than the residents of any other state, and therefore were likely to get drunk and shoot each other, if given the opportunity. Similarly, we often hear politicians who oppose lifting restrictions on firearms on college campuses, and support for bans on 18 to 20-year-olds from purchasing guns, ranting about how reckless and irresponsible young people are, and how widespread drug and alcohol abuse is on college campuses. These same politicians are often leading the charge to lower the voting age to 16, allow a 14-year-old to get an abortion without parental consent, and allow 4-year-olds to choose to be the opposite sex. I just saw a video clip of Vice President Kamala Harris giving a speech a few years ago, in which she said, talking about 18 to 24-year-olds; “What else do we know about this population? – They’re STUPID!” Which is interesting when you consider that this age group voted for Biden-Harris in huge numbers. Is that proof that she’s correct in her assessment?
It’s worth noting that, in spite of promises from the Bloomies, the Bradys, and the Demanding Mommies, that politicians who approved Constitutional Carry in their states, would pay a price at the polls, every Governor who signed a Constitutional Carry law and was up for reelection this year, won handily, while Hochul and others who seem to hold their constituents in such low esteem, struggled to eke out a victory, in spite of overwhelming partisan advantage.
Yes, the election of some of these elitist politicians does serve as proof that their low opinions of their constituents are well-founded, but it looks like some of their populations are beginning to wise up and start engaging their brains. Now if only more of their opponents (that’s you, Republicans!) would grasp the reality that trusting the people and supporting individual liberty, actually wins elections.
About Jeff Knox:
Jeff Knox is a second-generation political activist and director of The Firearms Coalition. His father Neal Knox, led many of the early gun rights battles for your right to keep and bear arms. Read Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War.
The Firearms Coalition is a loose-knit coalition of individual Second Amendment activists, clubs, and civil rights organizations. Founded by Neal Knox in 1984, the organization provides support to grassroots activists through education, analysis of current issues, and a historical perspective of the gun rights movement. The Firearms Coalition has offices in Buckeye, Arizona, and Manassas, VA. Visit: www.FirearmsCoalition.org.