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"Gun violence" is a misnomer. Violence using guns is a better description, but the left-leaning media will never correct this. Mass shootings get loads of attention, but the murder rate using guns has actually decreased in the last 20 years, not gone up. But to listen to the mainstream media, you'd think that a few nutters with guns is ushering in the end of the world. There will always be guns, there should always be guns for the law abiding enthusiast. Making it so difficult to obtain and use a gun is akin to a de facto blocking of the 2nd Amendment. A simple background check, which is already the law, works. Anything else is burdensome. Ditto have special permits to buy guns and ammo. If I need a permit to buy something legally, it's no longer a right, but a granted privilege. This is the reason, despite living in Texas, one of the most gun owner friendly states in the union, I have no gotten my concealed weapons permit. A right does not need a permit. I don't want a granted privilege. I carry one in my car because the law allows it sans permit, but I will not ask permission to do something the 2nd Amendment already grants. This is why states like Kentucky, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, Vermont, Arizona, all allow what we call "Constitutional Carry". They can carry legally with no permit, because the 2nd Amendment is the permit. |
No, residents of those states can carry legally without a permit because their state legislature said they could. "Constitutional Carry" is a cute nickname, but Vermont is still granting its residents the privilege of carrying guns in public. There is no nationwide right to concealed carry.
I'd advise you to read up on United States v. Miller (1939), in which the Supreme Court considered the argument you describe. The defendant was carrying a sawed-off shotgun without the proper permit, and his counsel argued that the 2nd Amendment absolved him of any wrongdoing. It was the Court's ruling that many of the firearms we purchase and possess today have nothing to do with the maintenance of a well-regulated militia, and as such, the states may regulate them as they please.
The Founding Fathers may have given you the inalienable right to a musket and a hunting rifle in the days before we had a standing army - but today, even in Texas, you're going to need a permit to conceal that semi-auto on your person.