More on Leaving Blue States

As you all know, Bill and I are in the middle of a real estate search, which has made our blogging a little irregular. We made an offer on one house that we really liked, but ours’ was not the winning offer. That left us scrambling over the weekend to find another possibility on which we made an offer this evening. We have our fingers crossed.

The other day I made a post inspired by Kim du Toit’s post on leaving blue states behind. I read comments on my post and on his site and they got me thinking about what states are lost to those of use who own guns and why.

Despite comments regardingWashington, Colorado, Michigan and others, there are only three states I think that are lost to gunnies; Massachusetts, California and New Jersey. Bill and I recommended leaving these states and strengthening the gun vote in New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and other states.

There are several conditions that make a state lost to gunnies. A lost state must have too few gunnies to make an effective opposition. In 1999, Massachusetts had 1,541,201 licensed gun owners, but in 2001 there were only 199,660 licensed gun owners. There are a number of reasons for the 87% drop including the possibility that many gun owners became disgusted and didn’t renew registrations while still owning guns. Since they're committing a crime, I doubt many will get involved in gun politics.

Admittedly, all of the three lost states still have gunnies in them. Having lived there, I can speak intelligently about Massachusetts. It has many people with a red state liberty-loving mentality especially so when you get outside of I-495 (a second ring road around Boston). It has people who still own and shoot guns, who still hunt, and who still join gun support groups. Attorneys like Jesse Cohen still fight petty tyrants.

Despite these gunnies, Massachusetts’s population has shifted from rural to urban. The same is true in New Jersey, and in California political power is also held by urbanites. Too many urbanites view guns as contributors to inner city violence. They don’t see guns as tools and recreational devices.

But, there's more to it than an urban/rural divide. The largest reason we lose a state is because large majorities of their citizens believe that gun control solutions actually work. They believe such claptrap despite all evidence to the contrary. A majority of people in Massachusetts support licensing and registration as “common sense gun control.” For them, owning a gun is tantamount to watching NASCAR or eating pork rinds. They view themselves as more evolved than gun-owning troglodytes. And, if they decide they don't want to own a gun, they want to make sure you either can't own one or have to jump through hoops to get "permission."

The social process is similar to England. Its own people disarmed itself by calling for more and harsher gun bans even while her leaders advanced their own agendas.

There is no political will in Massachusetts to change its unfair and unconstitutional licensing and registration scheme. Similarly there is no political will in California and New Jersey to stop passing anti-gun bills or roll back unconstitutional gun laws. In these three states while there are battles that must be fought as a rear guard action. Those people fighting these battles are to be saluted. Maybe they will win or there actually could be Federal legislation or court decisions that abrogate unconstitutional gun laws (okay one can dream).

We can win in all the other states if we organize. I could be wrong, but I believe New York and Illinois are still in play even though Chicago and New York City are lost. There are enough rural areas that could pull these states through. Encouraging things are happening in Illinois.

Again we salute warriors who remain in the lost three states. May you succeed. But, if you want to move to New Hampshire and make sure our local anti-gunnies can never gain the upper hand, we’ll save a place for you.