Author: Sebastian

The Roanoke Times is crapping themselves over the fact that it’s easy to get a license to carry in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

And I have my permit. Even though I have never laid a finger on a pistol in my life.

To me, that’s final proof that Virginia’s concealed carry law is insanely weak, utterly ridiculous and absolutely reckless.

It makes about as much sense as the General Assembly giving blind people permits to drive.

In Pennsylvania, it’s even easier than in Virginia.  But hey, even though we have about three times the number of licensees as Virginia, it’s not causing mass hysteria and blood running in the streets.  I suppose it probably comes as a shock to the Roanoke Times that people who aren’t into shooting typically don’t tend to get concealed carry licenses.   And lets not forget about Vermont and Alaska, which require no license to carry at all.  Real dangerous states, those two.  People shooting each other by mistake all over the place right?

Glenn Reynolds has a picture of a sign outside a Bonefish Grill in Tennessee.  That’s interesting, because we have several around here, and I’ve not seen any signs outside of them.  I should note that Bonefish is operated by OSI Restaurant Partners, which also owns Carrabba’s Italian Grill, Cheeseburger in Paradise, and Outback Steakhouses.

I’ve never seen any one of those restaurants posted here, or anywhere else.

Joe Huffman has the most thorough coverage of it, close enough to what I would have written to save me the time. I generally think it’s constitutional to deprive people convicted of certain crimes of their right t0 bear arms, but I think retroactively applying what is essentially a sentencing enhancement is ex post facto.  As Clayton Cramer is fond of saying, in the time of the founding, we deprived felons of their right to breathe oxygen, so it wasn’t a problem ever considered in the time.  Plus, I don’t think the founders ever considered felonies for putting lobesters in the wrong bag.

But despite the fact that I think some violent criminals can be constitutionally deprived, that’s not to say I agree with the current federal and many state regimes on this matter.  If the courts are willing to agree that blanket bans on gun possession by felons, violent or no, is unconstitutional, I have no issue.