This is why even as far back as the early 1800's it was not uncommon for local sheriff's to mandate a leave your guns at the sheriffs post at the edge of town policies. Yet, the local barkeep could still have a shotgun under the counter. Town was the public square, where the local bar, while a public establishment, was a private proprietorship.

Many of these type of rights extend from the pre-US castle doctrine laws which summed up shortly basically conferred the concept, that a person is king of their castle, the states rights should be significantly curtailed, when it comes to a personal private property. More modern day utilization tends to just boil it down to self defence, in ones private property, but historically it held a view which helped shape many of the personal liberties that were incorporated into the Bill of Rights.

Since nearly the foundation of the USA public possession has always been seen as a privilege extended by the state. In earlier times this was generally pathwork local law and the local sheriff view of guns carried in their town. Now it is generally more formalized via a state based licencing scheme.

A good read on rulings that imply it is a privilege:

https://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/tns-c...

Converse to the last paragraph though is that while precedence and the lack of challenges early on to public restriction lead to the concept of public possession being a privilege, the subject is now in modern day being battled out in the courts, and there have been some rulings ignoring history policy precedence

A good read on rulings that imply it is a right:

https://reason.com/2014/12/05/is-concealed-carry-a-privilege...

With all that being said, may issue is fraught with corruption and unnecessarily restrictive, in my state we have a shall issue and it works well, especially coupled with our strong castle doctrine laws. So well, that at the entry of my state an anti-gun group put up a billboard that said "Visitor's Warning - Florida residents can use deadly force". The billboards actually has the opposite effect than the group had intended so they removed them.

I would be a proponent of each state going to a shall issue system and extending the public privilege to a national recognition and reciprocity system, much like the state's driver licence systems are. That being said, it's fairly consistent that the state has almost since the beginning seen public possession as a privilege extended and not an absolute right.

A good read on the subject and precedence for public gun carry, from a purely historic perspective is this article:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-control-old-west-...

on a completely tangential rant, class 3 FFL transfers, require a sheriff's signature and are just as rife with corruption and cronyism. I used to live in a county where the local sheriff was very vocal about the fact that he would not sign for class 3's, yet every deputy or buddy, cousin or uncle had one. I would love to see the local law enforcement sign off requirement, for Class 3 be removed and rather just make it a duty to inform local law enforcement that one is in possession of a class 3.

Right or privilege, it should not be conditioned by bribes. And when a LEO is involved in a bribery case their punishment should start at several times that of the other (non-authority) person because it seems like that right/privilege comes at the end of extortion.

It is also notable, that gun control also fell under that same set of "State's rights" contributing to the original Civil War, and to hell with the well soap boxed dolts who insist that the only issue the Civil War was predicated on was Slavery. It wasn't. It was only indirectly so because the framework for expansion of Slavery was seen as falling under the banner of State's rights at the time, just as much as gun control itself was also seen as falling under State's rights. It's not a dog-whistle, it's what it bloody was.

Tangent aside, it basically boils down to the fundamental division of "rural v. Urban" in the United States, and to be frank, I side with the ruralites. Just because a bunch of people gather together in one place should not generate some emergent privilege that everyone loses an explicitly granted right except law enforcement. Period. Gun control almost universally arises out of some group being uncomfortable with another group having guns, and the group that's uncomfortable tends to be fine and dandy letting the authorities strut around with them, and would be unlikely to carry anyway; much like how pro public-transit folk seem to be more than okay with onerous vehicle regulation, but balk when the same laws or tenets are applied to them. Better to just not throw anyone under the bus at all.

Call me a yokel if you want. I've seen too much flung in the way of wrapping up other folk's rights in my lifetime in the name of public safety with no signs of a return in sight. Until I see some loosening up, or some honest give and take, I"m in the "not one more inch" camp.

With all that being said, I see magazine capacities, foregrip bans, scary gun cause it is plastic and black and those kind of rulings as a direct affront to the 2A because they apply to stuff in my home, I would be a felon if I lived in those states, literally one day I would be legal and the next I am a felon. With no recourse, even the Automatic Weapons Ban in the 80's allowed for the FFL 3 classification and the tax stamp to keep the weapons one already owned and while I am not advocating for a grandfathering of reasonable capacity magazines, and black rifles I am citing that in the AWB there was at least a path to keep your existing stuff legal.

I believe that I am level headed (at least I like to believe that I am), because I am first and foremost a pacifist but I acknowledge the logic that if someone is trying to harm you, you have a right to not be harmed. I respect devout pacifist and totally understand their logic, that the principle of pacifism is more important to them than self defense because violence flows from a few wells, fear/insecurity, despair/desperation, anger and jealousy. They believe to neutralize violence you are not violent against those that are in one of those states, rather one should be merciful on their them due to their torment, and that mercy is show in love for them and all people. I honestly admire that level of pacifism but don't know if I can ever get there, I get it, I accept that these are the primary drivers of violence but it's hard to be that principled and understanding while standing down the barrel of a gun. As VanZant so aptly put it in "gimme 3 steps", "Well it ain't no fun staring straight down a 44". I may be able to in a situation involving only myself, but with my wife and kids I just cannot see myself getting there. Thus I only carry a firearm when I am with my family. I used to be anti-handgun when I was young and would have been fine with a ban on them. It was not until later in life that I realized that people will literally, pick up a stick and kill someone else, so while handguns primary purpose is human on human violence, I realize that it is just an object and ascribing the violence to the object only blurs what we all need to fix as humans and that is man's inhumanity to man.

I'm not sure what you think "bear" means in "the right to keep and bear arms."

The Constitutional right to own a firearm doesn't mean much if you're not allowed to have it outside of your home.

And that is the current arguments being made, as their is the implication that by the preamble about the state needing the people to be armed to supply the militias if needed, that if they were called into the militia they would almost certainly not be baring arms on their property. We also have to take into account history, and historically the government did not strictly control open lands they were considered open lands or communal so pre-1900's carry laws being what they where, generally only applied to entering and leaving town, pretty much everywhere else no one has beef with someone having a gun. Times have changed, federal uninhabited land is shut off from the people for the most part and rights generally don't extend there anymore, as well town is a whole lot bigger now. These are arguments being made in support that the framers actually meant the right was "in public"

It's not a matter of what I think it means, it's a matter of what the supreme court thinks it means. So far they have been a mixed bag, the inherent self defense ruling was good but honestly should have been a no brainer. Given that one of the founding fathers was killed in a dual, and duals up until the 1900's where pretty much considered mutual self defense.

I think the ninth court hosed the decision on the Federal Assault Weapons Ban as this directly affected guns of similar features but different looks one could own or features that could be placed on guns. None of that really bothered me as a Browning BAR 300 win-mag with a modified magazine for high capacity would absolutely dominate the battlefield, but the key there is the precedent because by being able to ban pieces of the gun (because they only recognize the receiver as the legal gun), they have set the path for the current bans on magazine capacity and that is concerning because if it stands based on precedent, the 7 round magazines restriction, can legally be reduced to 1 round magazines, in effect only legalizing single shot weapons and while I know in the movies and video games, everyone dies from the first shot, the reality is a higher percentage of people survive shoutouts than die from them, even after receiving multiple gunshot wounds.

I wish people had a better sense of this earlier social arrangement.

It was the most conservative of approaches to gun possession and was imposed by the town elders who wanted to regulate and order behavior in the public sphere.

Now we find ourselves in bizarro world where firearms politics are exactly flipped: a free wheeling "let-do" policy is championed by "conservatives" and a highly regulated policy is championed by "liberals".

In reality, a historical perspective shows us that the ownership of modern weapons by average citizens is off the charts liberal. That is absolutely where it sits on a political spectrum of rights. It is, historically, the prerogative of the most conservative and reactionary interests to prohibit/restrict arms.

All that to say: I prefer the conservative approach. I, too, was very young once and very excited to exercise my rights and privileges ... I open-carried regularly, had a CCW, etc., and the result was a lot of discomfort and bad feelings. Carrying a firearm is a provocative act and it makes sense that conservative actors in a community would try to keep that at bay.

I think some of that has to do with the everreal presence of government in today's day and age. In the wild west, well it was the wild west. Other than the long arm of the law there was very little government or regulation, people did not feel the need that the founding fathers did. In all reality they were pretty free.

Contrast that with today and we have moved more and more issues to the federal level, we have pretty much abandoned the republic for an empire and now we are pushing social issues and regulation to a federal level. This does not end well, it never has.

When we has 50 strong independent governments that had more to do with peoples day to day lives and the federal government just stepped into the states business or rights issues, people had 50 shots at finding a representative government. Not so today, as more and more, the states (governmentally) look like cookie cutters of one another. I think this has set the "all or nothing", "I am not giving one inch" mentality that pervades discussion today, on almost every subject and it is coming from both sides. At a certain point, one side or the other is going to believe they need to stand up to federal government, because they no longer have a representative government and the ones that have guns tend to be of the mentality that those chickens are coming home to roost for their side.

To be honest even classic liberalism is dead, both are progressives when it comes to free trade, and unification of regulations across the globe.

Driving is also a privilege, yet no one has to bribe anyone to get a drivers license.

I believe the state of the law is that either concealed carry or open carry must be available. They can't both be may-issue, but one can be if the other isn't.

And I tend to agree that that's enough to satisfy the argument "it's a constitutional right".