Quietly, very quietly … with even most gun-bloggers not noticing as the bill moved through the legislature, Arizona is about to become the third state to go to Vermont carry. Everybody expects the gov to sign the bill.
That’s huge. Huge. And I wouldn’t even have known, except that Joel has been tracking the news.
ADDED: Normally, I would not even think about doing this. But thanks to a comment by gun-rights activist AlanR, I found this link asking Arizona residents to contact Governor Jan Brewer to urge her to sign the bill.
Normally, I think of that sort of thing as futile begging for rights that are already ours. In this case, though, Brewer is a pro-gun official who has already signed other pretty darned good gun bills into law. Writing to her now comes under the heading of encouragement (and possibly kudos) for doing the right thing. So if you live in AZ and are so inclined …
[…] h/t: Claire Wolfe […]
Arizona Citizens Defense League has been sending out alerts at every step of the process. Unfortunately I haven’ gotten AzCDL added to the alert handled by my audio cast yet.
Everyone with even a little bit of a political bent should subscribe to their state organizations’ gun owner rights alert system. (Note: The local NRA affiliate may not be your best choice. I.e.; the current situation in Iowa.)
AlanR … Thank you. I’ve updated the post to link to the ACDL site.
And too right about the NRA. Wouldn’t trust those weasels for any reason. How many times now have they actually fought against a good bill and substituted a poor one?
You already know, but for the few who may not … the NRA was instrumental in passage of the Brady Law, the 1968 gun-control bill and a host of other unconstitutional abuses. If I let myself voice the full scale of my contempt for the NRA, I could go on for hours. So I’ll just say: turncoats, Quislings, marchers in the fifth column.
But — whoohoo! — real gun-rights activists are winning the day despite them! Thanks again.
Arizona is sounding like a nicer place to live. Despite the lack of water even.
You mean governments sometimes require *permits* for a basic human activity? I’m shocked to find out that information and will be glad when it is lost in my cluttered mind in about 5 seconds.
Arizona is a LOVELY place to live, Winston. Cochise County is mostly up in the hills, and is cooler than TUS or PHX. As to water, the annual “monsoon”(about June-September) can help in the way of rainwater runoff from a roof-if you have a way to catch and store it. The monsoon also helps keep the cooling bills down in the hottest part of summer. Plenty of breezes for wind, lots of sun for solar. Now a Firearms Freedom Act AND Vermont Carry.
When this new law goes into effect, I might even have to reconsider voting for Gov Brewer. This new law meshes nicely with decriminalizing carrying a firearm in a bar (with CCW) last year. Cochise County is one of the best places to live in AZ, IMHO. Carrying a firearm is becoming more and more important evryday if you live, work, or travel outside of the towns.
I hear ya, I’d much rather adapt to a different terrain and climate with my mind and soul in tact, than to live “comfortably” in an unfree setting. I’m seriously considering Arizona.
Its on my list of possible places to move if things become truly unbearable. But, I think I’ll keep working on changing things where I’m at, for a little while longer at least. I’m invisible half the time anyway, so I’m a little better suited toward quiet rebellion.
(No, seriously, I disappear. I can stand right in front of someone and dance the merengue and they’ll later swear I was never there.)
Same here, Ellendra; I’ve had a couple of people almost walk straight into me, I’m so invisible; as if I don’t exist. And yet: I’m quite sure that you — and I — are more alive, alert and aware than they are.
Anyone: Is there any place in Arizona that HAS water naturally … or trees (evergreens and/or deciduous)?
Wish I had that wonderful quality of invisibility. Could be very useful.
As to trees in Arizona … check out the area around Flagstaff or the White Mountains above 6500 feet. Beautiful, heavily forested places. In the White Mountains there’s even a town called Alpine — and it merits that name.
Dunno about water per se, but you could probably collect enough snow in those places to keep you going for a while.
Thanks, Claire. I checked it out on Net and map. Even better than Alpine is a tiny town called Greer — not many people there. 🙂
Claire: Its great as long as you’re not doing anything for which attendance is taken. I used to get marked absent from class waaaay too often, because the teachers would look me in the eye and call on me during class, but would somehow remember only an empty seat.
If I could control that invisibility I’d be dangerous :p
It’s also great until they refuse to take you seriously.
I’ve spoken about something that was (apparently) so difficult for others to digest that they could only say, “Um… and what do YOU think, Jane?” (turning to someone else); and bypass entirely what I said, not even trying to deny or argue the issue. I guess their hearing was impaired that day.
Ah … but Pat, I don’t think that’s a function of personal invisibility. I think all of us get that sort of reaction now and then when people don’t want to deal, for whatever reason, with something we have to say.
I agree. And I consider the brushoff (which is what it is) another, ruder form — a deliberately aggressive attempt to make someone else invisible.
But I have made a point of trying to perfect my corporal invisibility; after all, if you’re lucky enough to have it, you may as well flaunt it — if you can “flaunt” non-existence.
Arizona is an arid state, if you look at a map, and draw a large crescent starting in the Northwest corner, and trace is to the Southeast, you have roughly configured the area of deepest desert, and most extreme temperatures.
The Rim country is actually the southern edge of the Colorado plateau, and stretches from Sedona to the state line with New Mexico, and this is the locale for the White Mountains. This year the Rim country got about 10 feet of snow in just one late winter storm, so yep, its wet enough, and high enough to grow some great trees. By the way, Greer residents expect to get snowed in for at least part of the winter.
However, no area in Arizona, with the possible exception of the Virgin river, is truly remote anymore.
Summer in the rim country is now Phoenix North as the minions race North to escape the 9 months of 100+ degree heat the Valley is famous for. Alpine hosts all kinds of touristy stuff, including their summer long atv festivals, which feature lots of drunken idiots on machines in the woods.
I commend Arizona for its courage to reinstate the rights we all naturally have-self defense, and the means to perform it, I only wish the state had the same courage when it came to preserving the heritage that actually founded the place.
I cannot express my personal sorrow at the loss of so much for so- called “progress”, because “progress” is not free, it comes with a heavy cost, one that fast food and teevee junkies are not even dimly aware of, or concerned about.
Some day when the water wars are a forgotten chapter in humanity, when the endless strip malls have collapsed into the burning stone laden desert floor, the land will once again be home to those who love it, rather than those running very fast away from themselves.
Thanks for that perspective, Rural Mike. It gives me other points to ponder about Arizona. The snow I can take, and the dry weather. (I’m sick and tired of the heat/humidity combination I get here every year.) The tourists I can take, too; as I said above, I can be ‘invisible’ — and I don’t go where they go anyway.
I don’t believe we can get that far away from ANYTHING these days, tourists, government, or jackass idiots. But a small town, the smaller the better, is a good place to start from and settle into; it’s always been my preference——to know a few people well and respect, and be respected by, them. And the only ‘respect’ I really need is that they leave me alone, in the libertarian sense. If Arizona — or any town or state — allows that, then I can take it.
Rural Mike,
I agree with you and do mourn the passing of what was great about AZ when I was a kid. Most of the truly great places to live in the state are what I call “Bring your own money” places. Nice to live there, but no economy except for tourism so you are best off to bring your own money. I have always felt living off tourism was like living off prostitution. You can do it, but have to put up with a lot of unsavory characters and will likely lose your soul in the process.
On a note about the water. Water access in AZ is also highly terrain dependent. Even though the White Mountains gets a lot of snow-fall the resulting moisture isn’t always available through surface water. Lots of it is under ground and requires drilling a well, sometimes a very deep well.
Pat,
I think what you are looking for is what most of America used to have, before the worship of concrete and asphalt “progress” brought the mega city to everyone’s doorstep.
I don’t know what you mean by invisible. It is possible, if you are good enough, to disappear into the natural world, but even there you will not be invisible. Your passing will be noted and commented upon by any of a number of residents.
I disappeared often when I was young, but I was always seen by Coyotes, Jackrabbits, Blackhawks, and Lizards, to name just a few.
The world was bigger then, and the reach of man had not destroyed so much of the magic of the desert.
Matt,
I have some small experience with tourism,and the tourism economy. Hardly a member of the local government, or the so-called business community ever considered the true cost to going tourist, all they ever did was have wet dreams over all those stacks of cash they imagined falling into their grasping hands.
An old Cowboy friend of mine who now is long gone had his term for this kind of person, he called it having dollar signs in their eyes.
The tourism economy is just another fast buck scheme that leaves a lot of casualties in its wake.
Somewhere along the way we lost our direction in this country. We got sold a bill of goods about where we should go, and now here it is dying. When we need the moral fiber to handle adversity, we find we threw it out the window to make way for corporate profits.
I think it is time for people to begin to retake their country, and to do that we have to retake our lives.
Rural Mike, let me clarify two points.
1) “Invisibility:” I am alive, and reside in a body, so somewhere I will be seen, heard, and found. I do know this. But there are ways to “hide in plain sight” and, in fact, I am often overlooked as I go about my daily business. I like it that way, and cultivate it as I’ve said above.
To help my case, among other things I don’t write letters to Congress or the media, I don’t vote, and I’ve never been arrested. (Or even stopped for a speeding ticket — which is, in itself, proof of my invisibility when even the cops csn’t see me breaking a law!) I don’t wear seat belts, either, and I don’t have a CC permit, so you draw your own conclusions about my ability to hide or not. You might say I’ve been lucky so far, but I prefer to quote Prof (in “the Moon Is A Harsh Mistress”): “I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
So far it has worked for me.
2) “Progress”: Arizona, like every other state, “ain’t what it used to be.” Of the eight states I’ve been personally acquainted with over the years, there’s not one that is pleasant to visit or I feel I could trust to lead me through a revolving door safely these days. But ATVs are not the problem, and “progress” is not the cause.
Government *at all levels* has usurped society in every field of endeavor — banking and taxes, education, medical facilities and regulations, interstate commerce, housing, corporate and local eminent domain with concomitant zoning laws, environmental concerns, political graft, vice, pork and incompetemce (name your poison), welfare, child services, etc. — and has, throughout hundreds of years, remained consistent in its ability to screw up the benign human attempt to establish a decent social structure, limited only by the knowledge and creativity present in any given era. The only difference these days is that ALL levels of government are attacking us simultaneously.
I think you know this, and we’re saying the same thing.
Progress is nothing more than moving forward; without it, we’d all be dead. I think a quote from “Last of the Dogmen” (which talks of the fate of the American Indian), is apropos to “progress” here: “What happened was inevitable; the WAY it happened was unconscionable.” True of Arizona, and true of many other states as well.
Pat,
Your life path is your own, so be it.
I don’t pretend that Arizona exists in a vacuum, or that the issues of the power hungry are limited to one out of fifty. Certainly, the government could not have accomplished the annihilation of America in such a short time alone. They had help, and still do.
I respectfully disagree about the concept of progress. It assumes that our forefathers were lacking, that they could not possibly have had a good life without cars, electricity, and paved streets. In retrospect, previous generations might ask, how can people today have a good life without clean air and water, time to sit back and breathe, the skills needed to survive, and the support of family?
Progress is a siren song, there to lure and then apprehend. By the time you realize what you have given up for your new toy, it is already too late. Just like this computer thing, it has its cost, so much more than dollars. The fact that we are shielded from the costs, that these costs are hidden away and glossed over does not change the nature of the price.
Civilization has recently devised a very clever scheme, a scheme where the costs are weighed upon the grandchildren. In a land of amnesia, no one with a voice recalls who sealed the deal once the bill comes due.
Certainly, there are good and worthwhile advances that few will argue with, yet the issue of progress is not about these advances, its about the death grip of the few on innovation, self sufficiency, and individual rights that translates into the monotonous pyramid scam that masquerades as the American Dream.
In conclusion, I will say that we are trained to perceive time as a linear only phenomenon, thus the concept of progress fits very nicely into this conceptual framework. However, time is also cyclic, a reality most often overlooked. Cyclic time does not lend itself so easily to the concept of progress, rather, it lends itself to the concept of of ethics, for it is inevitable that we all will revisit our previous acts again and again.