In the Texas Tribune, former Texas Governor Rick Perry took a shot at his fellow Texan, US Senator Ted Cruz, who may be vying with him in the 2016 Presidential Primary:
“It’s one of the selling points, if you will, to the American people as they decide who’s going to follow Barack Obama,” he said. “I think they’re going to make a rather radical shift, away from a young, untested United States senator whose policies have really failed.”
And then he shot himself in the foot, as far as I’m concerned, because it goes against one of his fundamental lines that had me giving him an approving eye the last time around (““My goal is to make Washington as inconsequential to your daily life as possible”):
Perry said he was “not necessarily all that fond of this open carry concept,” adding that those who carry guns ought to be “appropriately backgrounded, appropriately vetted, appropriately trained.”
“We license people to drive on our highways,” he said. “We give them that privilege. The same is true with our concealed handguns.”
So he’s not hep with the idea of open carry (and I don’t disagree with as there is the notion of “shoot me first”) but likes that Government must be asked FIRST before being able to exercise one’s Constitutional Right? When that happens, he’s right – the ability to own and bear (either openly or carried) arms becomes a mere privilege
subject to the whims of the prevailing political winds. Open carry is only available in Texas for long guns (rifles and shotguns), so there IS no ability for that route and if concealed carry was like it was in California, Illinois, or DC (up until recently), it effectively rules the Second Amendment null and void, doesn’t it?
And in this case, it puts into play his “inconsequential” statement vs “Thou Shalt” above into dissonance. Yes, the “inconsequential” was spoken at the Federal level while the gun rights are at the State level, but both can be generalized as “government” resulting in coercion (either against something or mandating something).
The ease at which his latest utterance came out now make me uneasy as when comes to such matters (and make no mistake, the gun rights battles are a proxies for Constitutional values and the dividing line of a Government that limits itself to protecting our Liberties and the type of Government we now have? Especially when set against the backdrop of how large gun rights figured in the lastest US Senate race here in NH with the Republican nominee, Scott Brown and the ongoing battles here in the State over the anti-gunners trying to disarm us.
(H/T: The Truth About Guns)
