Oklahoma Senate Bill 1212, which would allow residents over 21 and military service members over 18 to carry guns without a permit or license legally, has already been approved by the state House. According to CNN, it’s now headed to Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican who’s a pretty big proponent of the Second Amendment. Essentially, this legislation is all but guaranteed to pass—with a likely increase of guns in Oklahoma’s public and potential for increased gun violence as a result.
If this is shocking to you, be aware that 12 other states already have laws similar to the one Senate Bill 1212 would ensure. Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming residents do not require a license or permit to carry guns.
Republican State Sen. Nathan Dahm who sponsored the bill said forcing permits on people encroaches on their constitutionally guaranteed right to carry guns.
“This is the only right that we require people to preemptively go and do a background check, go through the fingerprinting process, the licensing process, jump through all those hoops in order to exercise their constitutional protective right, and the Second Amendment is the one right that says ‘shall not be infringed,’” said Dahm.
Unfortunately, these so-called “hoops” being casually dismissed often prevent mentally unstable people from shooting up schools and killing children, killing women, killing men, killing anyone else that doesn’t deserve to violently die because a background check was too arduous for a politician to implement into legislation he was probably paid to push in the first place. Fortunately, we all get these little things called ‘weekends’ every few days, so that we don’t get too frustrated by the realities of our country and those seemingly running it. Equally as fortunate is that there are more calm and eloquent people who verbalize this frustration more gently than I.
“Permitless carry is an incredibly dangerous policy that will make it easier for people with violent histories to be armed in public,” said Alyson King, a volunteer for Oklahoma’s chapter of the Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
It is essential to focus on the word “sense,” there—far too often, the discourse regarding gun control is illogically transformed into a binary discussion and pro-gun versus anti-gun echo chamber. The majority of people speaking out against gun violence are not demanding for guns to be banned—they want more sensible laws. If we can allow mentally ill people, violent people, dangers to our society—all of which are often documented making it easily ascertained whether or not they should own guns—then we will see nothing but further violence in this country. Let’s start having a sensible discussion.
