Happiness is a warm gun: Wyoming passes constitutional right to pack heat

Would the last liberal leaving Wyoming please close the door? The land of Dick Cheney just did away with the concept of gun control and passed a constitutional amendment allowing its citizens to carry weapons. No permits required. No license necessary.

woman-gun
We predict that crime rates are about to fall in Wyoming

The New American reports the worst news liberals have heard this week:

An important step was taken yesterday in Wyoming toward restoring the constitutionally protected right of Americans to keep and bear arms, as that state became the second in less than a year to enact legislation affirming the right of its citizens to carry a concealed firearm without a special government-issued license.

Following adoption in the state Senate, the vote of the House in the Wyoming legislature approved the bill by a vote of 48–8 several weeks ago, and Gov. Matt Mead signed it into law on March 3.

The right to carry a concealed firearm without a special license issued by the state is often referred to as “constitutional carry.”

Worst damn news liberals have heard all week. Or as we like to call it, best damn news we’ve heard all week.

Source: The New American

This post was last modified on January 26, 2021

gunsWyoming
editor:

View Comments (27)

  • I was listening to my local talk radio station this morning and the host read off a list of the "happiest" states to live in. At the top of the list, the state that the majority of people living there are glad they live there? Wyoming. Wyoming has the greatest number of residents who are happy with their state and are glad they live there.

    Ya'll think the people they elect to pubic office may have someting to do with it?

  • Now if only Wisconsin would do the same while all of its state senators have fled the state. Get on the stick, Wisconsin!

  • My daughter currently lives and goes to college in Wyoming. I feel much better about her being there now; I liked it before, but I like it better now! I think I'll send her a Taurus "Judge," 45/.410 for home protection and enough ammo to fend off the ATF when they 'drive by' and try to take it away from her.

    • Try that Judge with .410 triple ought. Pretty impressive pattern. 4 slugs back to back with about a 5 inch spread at 30 feet.

    • What the states need to do, is to arrest and prosecute federal officers that attempt to enforce unconstitutional laws within the borders of the states. "GET OUT!"

  • They just killed 2 birds with one stone(sorry for the hate speech). By enacting this law, they will make damn sure no more libs move there, the libs that live there move out, and the libs won't visit Wyoming. Okay-3 birds with one Binelli.

    • Your violent rhetoric is appalling. Would you step it up a bit? What kind of birds were these? I'll bet they taste like chicken if you cook em like chicken. Kitchen rhetoric makes me hungry.

      • Will there be gravy? That is the most important question of the day for me...

        Mmmmmmm. Graaaavy.

  • This is great news for Wyoming, but I continue to wonder why this type of thing is neccesary. The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution clearly states that it is the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It was specifically placed there to allow the citizens protection from an evil government. It says NOTHING about the type of gun, the caliber, muzzle load, breech load, under, over, sideways or backwards, single action, double action, semi-auto, full-auto, long, short, scoped, black, blue, purple or pink!!!! I don't see ANY restriction. It says arms PERIOD!
    Tench Coxe said that "...every terrible instrument of the soldier is the Right of ALL Americans and I pray that it will always be so..."
    So why have we allowed such an abomination, that the States need State Constitutional amendments to protect their citizens from a tyrannical government? HOLY COW!!! This is just one of many subjects relating to the U.S. Constitution that just makes me BAT-SHIT CRAZY!!!

    • It depends upon whether you feel that the Federal Constitution applies to the various state governments. I do not. Blurring the line of what the Feds can and cannot do into being a collective mandate for what the states can and cannot do gets us into all sorts of idiotic situations.

      While I think a state passing a law banning firearms is arguably one of the stupidest things they can do, it is also their right, as it is also the right of their citizenry to flee the high crime rate that such stupidity encourages. The best thing a state can do IMO is put the equivalent language of the second amendment into their constitution.

      We can't go stretching the federal constitution to mean one thing that impacts the ability of states to operate, but not another because we don't like it due to matters of philosophy. If we do so, we've accepted a false argument (that the constitution can be ignored at will), and all's the people wanting to destroy our nation have to do is to keep trying to get into office to pass non-constitutional laws to counter our non-constitutional laws.

      If, by way of an example, illegal drugs are agreed to by all as a national problem, then we need to amend the federal constitution to give the federal government the right to deal with it. Until then, the feds have no business passing and enforcing such laws. They have no right. If they seek to regulate as an interstate commerce thing, fine. But arresting cancer patients for smoking pot grown in-state seems to be way outside that provision.

      If someone hateful to our country sees that we ignore the constitution when we choose to do what we feel are good things, then they feel just as entitled to ignore it to do bad things. If things like that go to their logical conclusion, we'll wind up with a 'constitutional scholar' as president, pushing for sweeping regulations and nationalization of something huge, say, the health industry.

      God forbid such a thing should happen.

      • The Bill of Rights does indeed apply to all the states and prohibits unreasonable restriction by the states with the wording "right of the people" and "shall not be infringed". The few mentions of the right of the people is quite explicit in each application.

        • You're talking about the incorporation clause, which was created out of whole cloth by Courts' interpretation of the term "due process" in the 14th amendment.

          The problem is, that it, applied to the Bill of Rights which has two amendments that clearly do not apply to the states, makes things unclear. You don't want your Constitution to be unclear. It leaves the whole mess up to the courts to decide. In one generation, they decide that there is a right to privacy, should you possess the desire to murder your unborn, and in another, they can take it away. Neither reflects the will of the people -- just the particular legal philosophy of the times.

          This abuse can best be demonstrated by the evolving view of the Commerce Clause -- it went from states not being able to place tariffs on each others' products, to regulating farm products grown for resale, to wheat grown and consumed on the premises with no intention of resale, interstate or otherwise. Is it any wonder that Barry thinks it means nothing? Over the years, the courts have gradually perverted it into meaning exactly that.

          I don't recall ever electing a judge -- while I have voted to retain/not retain them, it isn't the same thing.

          The 14th is not entirely clear in its wording. If the intent was to incorporate Amendments 1 thru 8 into every state's legal system, then it should have said so. Leaving it up to a court to decide "Well, CLEARLY they didn't mean 9 and 10, so don't apply them to the states" leaves it up to them to say that others do or don't apply. Over time, some will, and others won't. That's the way that legal precedent works in this country.

          In all honesty, "Due Process" can mean just about anything -- it just means a legally recognized method of developing/implementing a law or a right. It can be a fiat decision by a dictator as much as an executive decree, administrative rule, law passed by senate, or a Constitutional Amendment. Our courts have decided for now that it means one thing -- they can decide it means another if the government so evolves. I feel that was exactly Barry's original dream -- to transform our society and become the Hugo Chavez of the North. [shudder]

          In Tsarist Russia, for example, what the Tsar said carried more legal weight than the Duma, which he tended to dissolve when it got out of hand, making laws he didn't like.

          • Funny how Russia suffered under the Tsars these same indignities the president of Mexico has inflicted and/or continued upon his peeps.

            Of course we agree on the unfortunate state of interpretations the Constitution suffers. I disagree with the "Living Document" definition applied to the U.S. Constitution. But this link - http://swiftest.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/the-constitution-a-living-document/ - has this about that;

            The idea that a living doucment should be continuously updated and reinterpreted based on the society and the changes in the cultural norms is a very contentious theory. The Constitution was adopted by the Constitutional Convention in 1787 as the ultimate law of the US. It was meant to be a stepping stone, a basis for the interpretation and the founding and rejection of new laws throughout the US. The Supreme Court, during the infancy of the US, established a pattern whereby the Court could interpret the laws set out in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as they saw fit. It’s kind of what started the whole appointing Justices based on political party and personal views thing - of course they are going to interpret the Constitution based on their personal beliefs, no matter what anyone says. The practice of judicial review, as part of the checks and balances of the Legislative and Executive bodies of the US goverment, was put in place in the US by the famous Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Judicial review not only checks the other bodies of the government, but also controls the laws put into place throughout the country. Judicial review is one of the main ideas that sets forth the ideal that the Constitution is a ”living document”.

            Our Constitution inherently makes the idea of a “living document” an argument at all because the Constitution itself cannot be altered. At all. The text within the Constitution is the same as when it was ratified by the colonies in the late 1700′s. What actually changes the Constitution are Amendments to the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights are the first 10 Amendments to Constitution. Everyone should be familiar with the first two (Freedom of Speech, etc, and the Right to Bear Arms) and the other eight are also laws that protect the ideals the Founding Fathers thought were inherent rights that people should enjoy in the US. These have not been altered either, but amended by the other 17 Amendments to the Constitution.

            Now here is where it gets interesting. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have not been edited, but reinterpreted. And depending on the Justices and the make-up of the Supreme Court, it has been reinterpreted in many ways throughout the 200-odd years of US History. So it has been considered by many to be a living document. I, personally, believe that it kind of has to be a living document. We have shown that it cannot be interpreted strictly based on its content because the Constitution was left purposefully vague in certain areas. The rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are guaranteed and obviously important, but any more detailed than that, and you are going to have arguments on how things should be.

            However, some argue that to call the Constitution a living document makes it completely worthless. It is thought that if the ideas are continuously reinterpreted based on the society’s ideals, the inherent ideas in the Consititution can become meaningless if the society does not feel that those laws should be in place. In fact, this has been proven. It has been shown that, because of the culture and the times, it has been necessary to re-define the central ideals in the Constitution. For example, Amendments were necessary guaranteeing women and certain groups of people the right to vote because other groups said that wasn’t inherent in the statements set forth in the Constitution even though the wording is vague enough that it should. Amendments can also be taken away - for example, the idiocy that was Prohibition. Because the society said it was so, the Constitution was re-interpreted to suit the peoples’ wishes. And when the same people (or a new generation) realized that the interpretation was a bad one, or that their wishes weren’t what they thought they would be, the Constitution was re-interpreted and amended yet again to reflect those wishes.

            So, in other words, to make a document a ”living document”, the ideas set forth are diminished in a way because they are shown to be fallible, even though they are said and written down in order to be infallible (ie inalienable). However, because people are fallible, I think that a document written by people (any document, work, etc) needs to be re-interpreted in order to keep the document important to the society living under its rules (that’s why democracy is so awesome). Nevertheless, it needs to be interpreted intelligently.

            Where human rights and law are concerned, anything not done intelligently and with great care should not be done at all.
            ------
            I'd run with most of these balls.

          • I tried to amend the above but the 3 minutes remaining when I started was not enough. All I wanted to add was this Ben Franklin. To wit; "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."

      • Bingo.

        Also, where in the constitution does it say that the federal government is responsible for health care? No where. Therefore, it is delegated to the states. Social Security? State's problem.

        • I've always felt the best way to deal with the ssa is to transfer the funds to the states. Maybe in Illinois, though, they'd commandeer them for electioneering, but they do get the government they deserve.

    • well yes and no... the intent (and I believe it's written somewhere--the Federalist Papers, perhaps?) is that every citizen has the inherent, automatic, assumed right to own/possess/carry whatever arms are issued to the infantryman (hence, heading off the absurd argument that if you NEIGHBOR has a tactical nuke, YOU should have one...), specifically as a means of thwarting and/or OVERTHROWING an overreaching government.

      NO WHERE, in ANY writing, does the purpose of guns for "hunting" appear.

      the I.N.T.E.N.T. of the second amendment is the insertion of fatal doses of LEAD into POLITICIANS. don't like it, Mr Politician? don't phukin DO the things said insertion leads to.

  • "President Obama has tapped Andrew Traver, a committed ringleader in the gun-ban movement, to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE). Now, the U.S. Senate must decide whether to allow Traver to take over this crucial government post." NRA

    I suspect Wyoming is passing preemptive laws to skirt the almost certain attempt at a gun ban by the freedom loving, tolerant liberals infesting Washington.

  • This is horrible! What about the ciminals' constitutional rights to commit crimes? Don't they care about that?

    Oh sure, YOU think there's no such thing. But trust me - give this issue to one of those much-much-smarter-than-any-of-us judges, and they will find it.

Related Post
  1. Bin Laden death photos show “brains hanging out of the eye socket.” Cool.
  2. Chris Matthews to become spokesman for NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association)?
  3. James Cameron goes to the Amazon, bores the hell out of natives