Right To Carry's Progress Proves
Who Is On The Right Side Of History

By Randy Kozuch. July 3, 2023

'Gun-control' advocates like to pretend that the arc of history is on their side and that America will inevitably follow its “peer” Western democracies in heavily restricting firearm ownership and banning armed self-defense. If you limit your reading to anti-gun newspapers like The New York Times or The Washington Post, you might be tempted to believe them. But my 29 years with the NRA tell a different story, with America’s ever-increasing embrace of the right to carry handguns for self-defense demonstrating that Second Amendment freedoms are as vital and relevant now as at any time since the nation’s founding. The fact that permitless concealed carry is now the majority rule among U.S. states underscores that history is on the side of law-abiding gun owners.

Of course, the carrying of firearms for self-defense is nothing new in America, as evidenced by the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to “bear” arms, which the U.S. Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller emphasized “codified a pre-existing right.” Meanwhile, various state constitutions protected a right to keep and bear arms even before the Second Amendment was ratified. Early settlers used firearms to protect themselves in the untamed wilderness of the American frontier, and handguns in particular became prevalent with Westward Expansion. Those firearms were typically carried openly, and cultural norms of the day considered the carrying of concealed guns as evidence of criminal or nefarious intent.

The federal government, to this day, has never broadly prohibited the public carrying of guns. Restrictions on public carry sporadically arose at the state and local levels during the 19th century. Some jurisdictions tried to ban the carrying of handguns in public entirely, while others more narrowly banned only the concealed carrying of weapons. .....