I recall – and it wasn’t so many years ago – that when gun rights activists talked about getting non-Vermont states to adopt “Vermont Carry” I laughed out loud. Right, I said. That’ll happen. Right after somebody finally gets me my flying car.
What a difference a decade makes. I’m not a legal scholar or (perhaps to my shame) much of an activist, so I don’t keep track of who’s doing what in the fight for gun rights. This morning I read that some politicians in Ohio had introduced a Constitutional Carry bill, and followed up to see if the event was worth a blog mention. Turns out Ohioans have been routinely introducing such bills since 1995, so not so much.
And according to the Wikipedia article linked above (which is out of date, BTW) Ohio is hardly unique in that regard. In fact it almost appears that – in this small matter, at least – sanity might be returning to big chunks of America. The right to carry a gun without being hassled is hardly the same thing as freedom, as I’ve mentioned before. But sometimes I almost get to wondering if there isn’t hope for our worn-out old country yet.
Of course I live in an awfully out-of-the-way corner of it, so take my observation with the boulder of salt it deserves and be careful out there.
Several people asked me about changes after the no “permit” law passed here. I have not seen anything at all different. Folks here just do what they gotta do, and nobody hassles us about it.
Well, except maybe by friends. I went to town one day with my CC rig, and a friend stopped me on the street to exclaim, “Were’s your gun? You always carry a gun!” Brief and discreet discussion followed… She is one I’ve been trying to introduce to carrying for a while. She hunts and shoots very well, just never considered carrying until I came along. 🙂
Ah, yes. Vermont carry. The good old days.
Funny how these things work. I got into the habit of carrying openly around town for the first several years I lived here, because CC was illegal without a permit and OC wasn’t. While rare, OC was common enough not to cause cop trouble. But I do like to keep a lower profile than that, and so now that non-permit CC is legal I generally give my pistol at least a fig leaf when I’m in town.
And I have at least one, possibly two close neighbors who never used to carry pistols but do now when they’re out and around with me. I like to think I had a little something to do with that.