Gun Control & RKBA

I have always felt that shall-issue CCW licensure is a compromise I could live with, satisfying both RKBA and the concerns of non-gun-owners.

Then, I went to renew my NC CHL again, that I've had since I moved here from Florida in 2003-2004, and found out that the state is now taking in excess of four months to issue your new permit, even though the background check requirements take only a few weeks and going past the already-excessive 120-day limit is illegal. At least in my county, NC is routinely violating that legal time limit, because the mental health records check that takes literally 5 minutes on an NC mental health records system wasn't being done because the agency doing them doesn't give a shit about legal requirements. And that to get an NC permit, you may end up paying upwards of $200 for the class and fees and losing a couple days of work to complete the process, pricing the working class right out of the picture. This directly targets the lawful and responsible members of the working class, while not addressing misuse at all. And the only way to carry during the illegally extended waiting period was to open carry, which I prefer not to do.

And then the Attorney General of Virginia announced he was unilaterally revoking the VA-NC reciprocity agreement, even though NC's training and licensure requirements are stricter than VA's, apparently as a personal favor to Bloomberg. Again, directly targeting the licensed, lawful, and responsible, and requiring open carry as the only legal alternative whenever I visit Virginia.

Meanwhile, criminals in NC *already* have permitless carry. If they want to carry a concealed gun today, they stuff it in their waistband and carry it. They don't care; why should they?

So, now? Yes, I'm all for "constitutional carry". Maybe it will help the gun control lobby stop setting its agenda based on hatemongering against gun owners, and pull them back toward the common ground that shall-issue carry licensure represents. If we have "constitutional carry", then prompt licensure easily accessible to the working class and based on reasonable de minimis requirements doesn't look so bad, does it?