"Shall Issue" Now More or Less the Law of the Land

You know how courts often (largely to our chagrin) look to state laws and decide that a "national consensus" on an issue has been reached (sometimes with as few as 27 out of 50 states supporting that "consensus"), and then impose that supposed "consensus" on all the other states, taking away states' rights to make their own laws?

You know how sometimes questions just go on for far too long? How they just get away from the writer, sometimes?

Anyway, Washington Post bloggers The Volokh Conspiracy find a new national consensus on the right to carry.

The Yellow states (arbitrary permitting) were the national norm in 1986, but they are now outliers. Unless the 9th Circuits’ decision in Peruta is overturned, California and Hawaii will have to become Shall Issue states. This will leave Yellow states at less than 1/7 of the U.S. population.

...

The six hold-out states are increasingly isolated.

The writer notes:

It is interesting to compare the above chart to the map showing the demise of laws against “sodomy” (oral or anal sex), between 1970 and 2003. On the eve of Lawrence v. Texas, there were still 13 states which had sodomy statutes.

And we know how that went.

Obviously I have become a libertarian (where I was once merely libertarian-leaning), so I view this all as good. I am just increasingly suspicious of -- and hostile to -- people who believe they are so possessed of the truth about how any particular person ought to live his life that they can and should seek legislative action to impose this truth upon people.

From Instapundit, who frequently writes of the growing "Leave Me Alone" coalition.

posted by Ace at 03:15 PM

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