OSD 151: Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine)
State-level laws will continue to bifurcate in 2022.
🎶 Then time will tell just who has fell
And who’s been left behind
When you go your way and I go mine 🎶
We like to say around here that gun rights are winning. Culturally, that’s almost universally true. Outside of a few small pockets, gun rights have been getting more and more popular for 25+ years. But legally, it depends on where you stand. Not where you stand on the topic. The jurisdiction where you’re standing.
Since the 1980s, states have bifurcated hard on gun laws. The first assault weapons ban in the country, California’s, passed in 1989. Seven states have them — California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. All of them passed their bans in the 5-year period from 1989 to 1994. Since then, 6 out of the 7 states (all but Hawaii) have ratcheted their bans tighter every 10-15 years.
In the other 43 states, the flip side of the bifurcation has proceeded apace too. In 1986, 9 states had shall-issue concealed carry permits. Today, 42 states have them, and 21 of those don’t even require a permit at all. That wave grew geometrically.
Whichever direction a state was slightly pointed in the ‘80s, it’s pointed much harder in that direction today. There is a logic that makes this predictable: the bigger the jurisdiction, the harder it is to pass a law. That’s because the level of disagreement will mainly be a function of how many people are involved.
Federal laws affect 330 million people. If you’re trying to make a new law, chances are that some of those 330 million will dislike your idea enough to torpedo it. At the state level, things are less difficult. At the local level, they’re easier still. This is obvious in the limit — a law that only affects the person who makes it wouldn’t be contentious at all, because nobody else would be affected by it.
For gun laws, the equilibrium lands somewhere between the local and state levels, depending on the homogeneity of the relevant lawmaking bodies. And you can see that play out as each state fires up its 2022 legislative season.
In the gun-friendly states, permitless (a.k.a. constitutional) carry will continue to be the big story this year. In 2021 alone, 5 states passed permitless carry. In 2022, Alabama, Georgia, and Indiana are poised to join the wave.
As for gun-unfriendly jurisdictions, Denver is on its way to criminalizing homemade firearms, and the same idea is going to see a push in Maryland. The governor of New Jersey aims to further ratchet down that state’s various bans and permitting obstacle courses.
And while that all plays out, sometime between now and June we’re going to get a Supreme Court ruling in NYSRPA v. Bruen — nominally a case aiming to strike down may-issue regimes, but the opinion(s) will be fodder for a whole new wave of lawsuits about gun laws. This is going to be an interesting year.
🎶 You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows. 🎶
This week’s links
“How do silencers work, and how silent do they actually make guns?”
From the extremely mainstream YouTube channel Today I Found Out. The tide is turning on public perception of silencers.
The homemade guns of Taiwan
No one is allowed to own guns in Taiwan, with one exception: Indigenous hunters. But there’s a catch. Each hunter must make their own gun by hand. This leads to hunters using DIY guns of varying quality, often sorely lacking in safety. Guns made in factories are strictly banned.
Indigenous hunter Talum Suqluman was charged in 2013 with using an illegal gun to hunt protected animals. In 2021, his case went before Taiwan’s highest court in an attempt to resolve the conflict between the right of Indigenous peoples to practice their hunting culture, and Taiwan’s near-total ban on civilian firearms. Many Indigenous activists rallied around Talum’s case, surfacing centuries-old tensions between the Han Chinese majority and Indigenous communities of the island.
Sherri Shepherd on The View talking about buying a gun
Interesting to see the nuances of how different people react.
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Washington may be something of an outlier. It has traditionally been gun friendly (one of the eight states that was shall issue in the 80's) but has had an increasing push for bad gun policy, largely starting with I1639 (created a state registry, added waiting periods, and some other stuff) in ~2018 and which has been expanded several times since, including dissuading policies on handguns and modern rifles, and even waiting periods and taxes on all receivers (not yet in effect). We've had to fight magazine and modern firearm bans every year for the last several years. Even this year, an election year, the magazine and modern firearm bans have been proposed again. So WA is a weird example of a state that's been heading in the wrong direction, but very, very slowly and without the big-headline bad policies... yet.
You didn't mention Ohio dropping CCW training and permit required to conceal carry