Bladed wrote:Off the top of my head, here are a few compromises that constituted huge gains for gun owners.
1. Texas's CHL law: Twenty years ago, one side wanted citizen to be able to carry handguns for personal protection, and the other side wanted to maintain the status quo in which only trained, vetted, commissioned peace officers could carry handguns. The two sides compromised.
2. The federal safe passage law: The Hughes amendment not withstanding, the Firearm Owners Protection Act was a compromise between states that wanted local control over their firearms laws and gun owners who wanted to be able to travel with their guns without risking jail time.
3. Virtually every gun rights bill that has ever passed in Texas or any other state: Whether we're talking about the passage of PC 30.06 (a compromise between gun rights and property rights), negotiations over the parking lot bill (certain influential groups were granted limited exceptions in order to ensure passage of the bill), or changing "fails to conceal" to "intentionally displays" in 46.035(a) (it's not open carry, but it does address the issue of unintentional display), most gun rights wins involve some form of compromise.
In my humble opinion, one of the more pervasive threats to the gun rights movement is the all-or-nothing mentality promoted by some of the more fanatical factions of the movement (e.g., the open carry advocates who, in complete disregard for the realities of Texas politics, are antagonistic toward efforts to pass anything less than unlicensed open carry). It's rare to see a controversial bill pass without at least a few concessions, and nothing is gained by watching a perfect bill die.
Those "compromises" were our taking back some of the rights that we had lost from either previous compromises or just leftovers from the Yankee Imperialistic Occupation after the War of Northern Aggression. Even with them, we're not back to where we were with what the Founding Fathers intended. We need to put the leftists on the defensive for a change instead of just slowly giving up more and more of our 2nd Amendment guaranteed rights.
"The secret to successful negotiation is to ask for the world, but settle for New Jersey."
