Starting today, Oklahoma’s open carry law is open for business. Huzzah! That said, only citizens with a concealed carry permit can openly carry a firearm in the Sooner State. Oh, and newsok.com tells us that “the pistol must have a barrel no larger than .45-caliber.” What’s more, “The law requires any person carrying a handgun to immediately notify a law enforcement officer that he is carrying a firearm when he comes into contact with the officer during any arrest, detainment or routine traffic stop. Additionally, a law enforcement officer may demand that a person carrying a handgun produce his permit. The law requires a gun carrier to show his permit to police upon demand.” Did I mention the list of prohibited places? For example . . .
• Any business that displays a sign prohibiting firearms.
• All city, state and federal buildings.
• All elementary and secondary school properties and on school buses.
• An establishment where alcohol is consumed if the sale of alcohol constitutes the establishment’s primary source of income.
• Any place where pari-mutuel wagering is authorized.
• Any sports arena during a professional sporting event.
• A meeting of almost any governmental entity or legislative body; any jail, prison or detention facility.
• Any place owned or leased by a city, state or federal government for the purpose of conducting public business.
• Any courthouse.
• Colleges, universities and technology centers, except where authorized.
• Any other place specifically prohibited by law.
Does that sound like a victory for gun rights to you? Which one of these obvious infringements squares with the “shall not be infringed” part of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution? The bit about needing a permit, which currently takes close to 100 days to secure? The ban on campus carry? What?
The fact that Article II, Section 26 of the Oklahoma State Constitution—“nothing herein contained shall prevent the Legislature from regulating the carrying of weapons”—enables the trampling of Sooner Staters’ civil rights does nothing to justify this roster of regulations. At least in my mind.
Yeah, yeah, I know: baby steps. Realpolitik. You get what you get and you don’t get upset. Win enough battles and you’ll eventually win the war. Etc.
Really?
Shouldn’t gun rights groups, including and especially the NRA, “hold out” for the firearms freedoms protected by our Founding Fathers? When pro-gun advocates accept compromise, aren’t they making it more difficult to achieve our birthright? I mean, what are the odds OK will roll back these restrictions?
Equally, is it morally acceptable to accept some limitations to our 2A protected rights to eventually remove them?
These are not theoretical considerations. One way or another, Illinois’ concealed carry ban is headed for the crapper. At some point, the pols will want to play let’s make a deal. As they will in NY, NJ, Hawaii and elsewhere. Should we?
“…shall not be infringed.”
Exactly.
Any compromise, any law, any agreement, regardless of intention, which disregards, usurps, violates, or otherwise circumvents these four words is UNCONSTITUTIONAL, un-American, and possibly even an act of treason.
100 days to get your permit in OK? It took me ten, from filing to permit-in-hand, and my state’s fvcking blue on the election maps! WTF?
I also am currently in a blue state, and two days after I was fingerprinted and signed the necessary documents, my permit was in my mailbox.
That is ridiculous. My Utah permit took just shy of 90 days.
Wait times? Fingerprints?
From the time I told the man at the courthouse what I was there to do, it was 15 minutes until I was walking out with the license.
Then there’s the free states, where you don’t need a silly license to carry.
Wait times? Fingerprints?
Pennsylvania?
That’s how it works here. Unless you live in Philadelphia or a county bordering Philadelphia. In which case the anti-gun political slime oozes over and poisons the process.
It took me about 20 minutes to get my permit. 40 minutes if you include time in the car. I live in a blue state too.
-D
I sent my FL paperwork in a week before Christmas a few years back, not expecting the CCW until March. It arrived a few days after the New Year Holiday.
According to the story in the Ar Democrat Gazette business owners do not, by law, have to post a concealed carry prohibited sign on their business. It is up to the business owner to decide if they will allow it.
Jimmy Bunn legal counsel for Oklahoma State Bureau of investigation stated in the newspaper” Business owners do have the right to prohibit firearms on their property but they do not have to post a sign alerting handgun owners about restrictions”!!
Sounds like an income raiser to me. Misdemeanor for carrying in the business = a fine paid by the ccw licensed person = more income for the local PD!!
I don’t think pro-gun politicians are sell outs. Rather, in some states Democrat politicians still control enough of the legislature to block any pro-gun bill they don’t like.Thus, “compromise” *has* to be reached or NO pro-gun bill becomes law. Sometimes the compromise is minor, like requiring that firearm owners disarm at the bar. Sometimes the compromise is a poison pill like the Hughes Amendment.
Such Democrats are still in power because there are millions of Americans even in red states who believe that while we all should be allowed to keep arms,***** bearing*** them demands extraordinary government scrutiny. After all, we’re not talking about cars or knives here-guns need to be regulated to ensure only the GOOD people have them no?
Until that cultural attitude changes, don’t expect anything similar to ” shall not be infringed” to become law.
ST;
With all due respect, “…shall not be infringed.” has ALWAYS been law. Since 1776.
The issue is too many sheeple allowing their local and federal government agencies to circumvent the law.
*1791
I don’t think its as simple as sheeple “allowing” their local and federal agencies to circumvent the law. In some quarters the sheeple all but beg their elected reps to outlaw the 2nd Amendment.
I believe this is a hard concept for many red-state gun owners to follow-why would a population logically vote to eliminate its own rights?-but take it from me, there’s a reason anti-gun gasbags like Feinstein and Rahm E. have gainful employment. While the 2nd Amendment has been law for centuries, unfortunately legalized hoplophobia has just as long of a legal track record. In order to undo the mess and put crooked politicians and their laws on the curb we have to address the cultural problem of voters thinking firearms are some evil WMD which on face value has to be strictly regulated, Constitution be you-know-what.
A compromise is when two or more parties give something up in order to reach a mutual agreement. These are not compromises. We are the only ones giving anything up. Our rights are naturally inherent and exist prior to and in spite of government edict. These “laws” whittle away at our rights incrementally and we are naive to think we will get anything back by continuing to “compromise.”
When you hold all the cards, you don’t gain (or even maintain) anything by laying them down.
Deal making and compromise is what lost us our rights in the first place. Let’s get back to shall not be infringed first before we do any thing else.
I’m not renewing my NRA membership and after this election I’m changing my voting status to Independent. Any body wanting my money or my vote had better bring their “A” game to the table.
jwm, it sounds like you are walking away from the table where they will decide your fate. Is that wise?
C.K., if they want my vote they’ll earn it. I’m sending an e-mail to bothe major parties telling them how to earn my vote. We’re a polarized country and these elections have been getting tighter and tighter.
I want to make them earn the OFWG vote.
So, I guess what’s left is you can carry (concealed or open) in your own home, unless of course, you are home schooling.
“Pro-gun” politicians are usually pro-gun only to the extent that we don’t carry a gun anywhere they might be, and that we don’t carry a gun anywhere that it may cost them votes.
Culpeper Kid, staying at the table where they decide your fate simply empowers them to continue deciding your fate. Walking away, withdrawing your consent and deciding your own fate is the only way to truly be free. Continuing to participate only encourages them.
Henry, as an independent I will still be in the game. I just hope that they’ll try harder to earn my vote than if they just expect it.
As for dropping out of the system alltogether, no, that just leaves all the decisions to be made by a few. That few writes all the laws and the rest of us are stuck with the results.
Henry my man, walking away is exactly what they want you to do. When guys like you stay home, guys like them laugh at you. The reason why pols get away with screwing with our rights is that we don’t go to the polls. The voters that the politicians control will always go to the polls as long as they want to keep getting their handouts and government jobs. And so it goes, on and on.
If your idea of freedom is nothing left to lose, then by all means sit this one out.
This is indeed good because it is progress and is exactly how things get done in the real world. The reason this is how things get done is that it is the only successful strategy. You pass what you can pass in the way you can pass it, then you chip out the parts that aren’t ideal later until you form it into what you ultimately want. While it sounds good in stories and parables, in the real world grandstanding bravado and uncompromising idealism will pretty much get you neutered out of any role in society where you can actually advance your goals. So good for OK. Passing something like this is hard, modifying it bit by bit afterwards to get rid of the BS in the first cut is not. They won the bigger battle, and that is productive, and therefore smart.
-D
Don, we already went through the very process you describe.
The year was 1776.
Except that law and our own constitution was never intended or guaranteed to be static. It is a document that can be changed, law can be changed and adapt. This is different than other codes of law or ethics that people are used to which “descend from authority”, like the bible or whatever.
This means that power at getting what you want isn’t making some silly stand and being obstinate or citing some legal document as gospel truth when it wasn’t ever intended to be and isn’t. Argument from authority doesn’t fly (which is why the founding fathers set things up the way they did).
Power at getting what you want is defined by a continued and dynamic process of cutting deals that are in your favor, then cutting new deals which remove what wasn’t in your favor the last time. Whoever is BETTER at this gets their way in the end, and after you get your way you need to CONTINUE to cut deals and participate to make sure you can keep it.
So great, something was done in 1776… in a country with an appendable, changeable, and continually negotiateable set of laws… (which the founding fathers made that way because they flatly reject the concept of static rules descending from authority… because that’s how kings get made, which ironically now days is the opposite of how some people choose to view them… they’ve been canonized as saints and their writings treated as prophecy). Meanwhile some people won open carry in OK where they didn’t have it before, and they traded some nuiscance stuff which can and likely will be worked out in civil rights lawsuits later and the ability to carry calibers bigger that .45 to get it. What’s more important, to not get smacked with some BS brandishing charge when your jacket blows open or to CONTINUE to not be able to carry your desert eagle in an elementary school on your hip?
-D
Don, Don, Don……
The Constitution and Bill of Rights are NOT NEGOTIABLE, and NEVER were intended to be.
These documents do not give us our rights, and therefore can not take them. these documents PROTECT our GOD GIVEN RIGHTS, which are SELF EVIDENT.
Herein lies the problem… your expressed view of what the constitution and the bill of rights are does not match the reality of what the constitution and the bill of rights are.
Proof by contradiction: how can documents which contain a means for unlimited modification based on negotiation followed some form of majority agreement, be non negotiable? The existence of this attribute is a pretty clear definition of intent to be negotiable. Not to mention the fact that the first iteration was brought into existence by this same process of negotiation and majority agreement. Quite a bit different an arrangement from tablets coming down from mount Sinai.
Also, these documents don’t protect anything outside of the legal framework they exist in. They merely “state” or “enumerate” or “declare” rights people have decided to agree on respecting. If people don’t respect these things, then protection only happens if someone decides to do something about it and if society agrees to let them and backs them up with force (physical, intellectual, emotional) if they can’t handle the disrespecting party themselves.
Also, if these rights are eternally self-evident then why were non-white non-male non-landowners overlooked at first then later added? That means either that all rights aren’t actually self-evident or that god didn’t give these rights to said groups until later. In the event of either case, when some right becomes suddenly self-evident or god given then it needs to be added if the document is to be complete. Things have been added via the process of negotiation and majority agreement.
Isn’t it strange that neither the documents or god can prevent someone from taking away your rights with the simple application of a sufficient amount worldly power?
The only immutable law in nature, and by extension mankind, is force (physical, intellectual, emotional) and the only right you have is what you can take, and only for as long as you can hold it against being taken. Your only tools are physical, intellectual, or emotional appeals… i.e. hurt somebody, convince them, or bullshit them.
The rest of it is all stuff people have come to via collective and dynamically evolving agreements, because we generally are all aware that cooperation is an optimal survival strategy… and it only is because cooperation multiples force.
-D
You must be a liberal. NON NEGOTIABLE! Living, breathing documents? Listen to RKBA.
RKBA: not being a jerk, just want to be educated for arguing with gun grabbers. What do I say when the grabbers ask me to back up that owning guns is a “God given right”?
You can say a contract is non negotiable all you want. Doesn’t change the fact that it is. Sorry you can’t rest forever on someone else’s work from 200 years ago. You need to continue to compete and win in the collective negotiation if you want your way. If you are incapable of doing so you only have “the right” to whatever falls off the negotiation table that your owners are preparing their daily meals on. You can gobble it up and then go take a nap on the floor, or you can choose to be at that table and be getting something for yourself, all that your wit and cunning at negotiations will allow.
90 days in MO. And I was told, don’t call earlier. They called at 91 days. Heard later through that the Sheriff delays as long as possible to issue. In the next county over, my relative picked his up in one week.
Every time I read a story like this, it makes me sooooo happy to live here in Arizona……
Open carry, no problem…..
Concealed carry, no problem…..
PK, I’m on my way.
🙂
Free America!!!
Pro gun pols usually don’t actually care about gun rights.
Oklahoma is doing well though. They’ll actually have constitutional carry soon. They’re letting people from AZ, WY,AK, and VT carry without a permit under their reciprocity rules. That’s not fair to people from OK and so will be changed in the years ahead.
The worst thing about a handful of states to my mind are “signage” laws on private property. Totally unnecessary and scary as a gun carrier. I understand jails being prohibited places….maybe courtrooms in some circumstances.. but there is no rational for the others.
”the pistol must have a barrel no larger than .45-caliber.”
Eyes rolling here. Having been raised and lived mostly in or near Northern big cities, I usually imagine most Southern states to be more realistic about guns and supportive of personal self-defense.
This is a brilliant concession (for the purposes of compromise and actually getting something for pro- people) if you ask me because it sounds like one to an anti- but functionally is not. Anti-gun people hear this and think “good they are restricting something” when in reality no one is going to carry something bigger than a .45 for self-defense anyway. The anti- people who don’t know any better or are only informed by the ubiquity of desert eagles in movies have another bullet point to feel accomplished about, but it doesn’t impede 99.999% of the pro- people.
-D
Don, that is a good observation.
That really isn’t such an outrageous list. It’s not one I would come up with, but at least they make some sense.
I see this as a “we’re winning” situation, not that we don’t have more to fight for.
All Pols are sell outs. The last 236 years has an abundance of examples. The only true goal of a Pol is power and the associated wealth. The hoops a citizen must jump through for a gun is but one issue.
I’m just shocked as I live in a much more liberal state (Washington) and have open carry and it’s a must issue state. Sorry people in Oklahoma though you do deserve some hell for stealing my NBA team.
They didn’t steal your NBA team, Washington gave it to them, and for good reason 🙂
Next election season, get a measure on a ballot to amend the text. It’s better to be able to carry in most places than in no places.
It depends on your understanding of OK politics/demographics (I have none) to know if holding out for a bill that’s perfect the first time around is viable. There is always handwringing and ideological differences, and that usually means compromise. Beats dictatorships.
I hope that one day Oklahoma, and the rest of the United States can be like Alaska. No permit required for citizens who can legally possess firearms. No permit for conceled or open carry.
And for those that desire a permit so as to travel, even though the state says it may take up to 90 days, everyone I’ve spoken to said it arrived in about two weeks. Mine took 3 days.
Of course you still have to declare firearms to police when stopped, and surrender firearms during the interaction if the cop tells you to- but they must return the firearms at the end of the interaction.
And truthfully, it seems like most cops up here are so used to an armed populace that they don’t care. Well over 95% of the time I have interactions with police they don’t even bother asking for the gun- usually saying something to the effect of ‘you keep yours holstered and ill do the same’ (I drive a crappy car that screams “drunk/druggie” and has enough electrical problems I’m changing taillights once a week).
Too bad Alaska’s knife laws stink, and so does your declaration requirement. Y’all still have a lot of work to do, as do we in Arizona.
To jwm, Ralph, Culpeper Kid, and anyone else who thinks you can win the rigged carnival game of voting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5FNDRgPOLs
Henry, so you don’t vote, how does that effect anything? So long as you’re employed, paying taxes, buying products and spending money in the economy you’re still supporting the ” rigged carnival game” only without a voice in the rigging.
Do you think these pols give a rats ass that you’re standing on morals so long as they get you participation in the economy? They would actually like you to stay home on election day. Enough people do that and they can just drop the pretense and rule by decree instead of consent.
Unless you’re willing to cross over into Canada and seek asylum there you just might as well dig in here and get in the game.
Jwm,
“Enough people do that and they can just drop the pretense and rule by decree instead of consent.”
You said it perfectly. Their rule by consent is a pretense. They use voting to deceive you into believing you have a voice. If everyone stopped voting, it would expose their illegitimacy.
You asked how removing your consent effects anything. Well, on a personal level, it is psycologically freeing. I am no longer beholden to a false sense of duty. While they may try to rule my body by force, they will never rule my mind.
I avoid handing over material support as often as possible. Basically, only that which will land me in prison otherwise. Also, I don’t want a voice in the rigging. I have no desire to use the force and guns of government to impose my will upon people who disagree with me… and voting, at it’s core, is exactly that.
Sounds like the Sooner state took the book from state of Ct. and just copied it word for word. What a dam shame. Once they adopt these regs. You almost never get them out.
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