Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly right! When there's no clear set of criteria for a permit and people get denied for this or that or maybe no reason at all. Just try getting a (unrestricted) LTC in Boston, near impossible -- unless you "have friends". This is how LTCs (License To Carry) work in Massachusetts, it's city by city dependent on the Chief of Police. The criteria should be clear and contestable in court. Like it or not, it'…
I say this as a big proponent of the right to self defense on a personal level, the current legal view is that, gun possession in the public square is not a right, it is a privilege, one that can be revoked as seen fit by the government. What is a right, is to keep and bear arms, this means one can maintain possession of their arms without fear of confiscation on their personal property or property in which they have…
It is also notable, that gun control also fell under that same set of "State's rights" contributing to the original Civil War, and to hell with the well soap boxed dolts who insist that the only issue the Civil War was predicated on was Slavery. It wasn't. It was only indirectly so because the framework for expansion of Slavery was seen as falling under the banner of State's rights at the time, just as much as gun control itself was also seen as falling under State's rights. It's not a dog-whistle, it's what it bloody was.
Tangent aside, it basically boils down to the fundamental division of "rural v. Urban" in the United States, and to be frank, I side with the ruralites. Just because a bunch of people gather together in one place should not generate some emergent privilege that everyone loses an explicitly granted right except law enforcement. Period. Gun control almost universally arises out of some group being uncomfortable with another group having guns, and the group that's uncomfortable tends to be fine and dandy letting the authorities strut around with them, and would be unlikely to carry anyway; much like how pro public-transit folk seem to be more than okay with onerous vehicle regulation, but balk when the same laws or tenets are applied to them. Better to just not throw anyone under the bus at all.
Call me a yokel if you want. I've seen too much flung in the way of wrapping up other folk's rights in my lifetime in the name of public safety with no signs of a return in sight. Until I see some loosening up, or some honest give and take, I"m in the "not one more inch" camp.
