“Like so many in states such as New York, New Jersey and California, he found out that even though he is a good citizen who can easily pass a background check, he still had to beg and pay fees to utilize this basic constitutional right. These kinds of interactions with the state change people.”
In a recent opinion article, William McGurn, a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, tells us he just got a permit, in New Jersey, for a gun. He then asks what so many first-time buyers are asking this year: “Do other Americans buying guns for the first time find it as grating as I do to learn that we need government permission to exercise a constitutional right?”
Honest questions like this, asked often enough and by enough people, can change the system.
We’ve written a lot here about the nearly five million (and counting) new gun owners in America this year, and about how this trend might influence the electorate in this presidential election. But experiences such as McGurn’s are also pulling threads on a big lie often told by gun-control groups and the politicians that support them: They tell us American freedom is to blame for the illegal actions of a small, but dangerous, criminal class.
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by Frank Miniter
