trophyhunter
Sharpshooter
I know, and I agree with everyone's position that has already paid their dues and I can't ever like the idea of paying more money regardless of the amount to exercise my 2nd amendment rights especially if a penny of it is being used to pad some JBT's gear fund be it in state or out but the onus is on us to accomplish what the last generations didn't.I missed this before.
Trophyhunter, if I was paying that $40 to actually advance liberty, I'd not have said a word. I'd pay it happily. However, what I misunderstood at the time was that we would lose recognition in other states unless we ponied up more money to the state coffers, to be used who the hell knows how.
A few years ago, a guy (and his wife, I think, not sure) made an appeal to the nation. Money poured in from all over to help his conjoined-twin babies get an operation to separate them from each other. They got the operation, but somewhere along the way, he got found out for using that money not to pay medical bills but to fund his habit... seemed he liked blow more than he liked his kids. Recently, a couple in Ohio (from Alabama, as I recall, but this happened in OH) ODd on heroin in their baby's hospital room bathroom. The birth giver died and the sperm donor is in jail, on charges. There was a GoFundMe to help with their expenses too, but somehow, I don't imagine most of the people who gave expected to be buying smack. In both cases, people were happy to pay to help, but not to pay money someone else could waste.
Too often, the power of the State is brought to bear upon those who have done nothing to deserve to have their lives ruined. If I recall, part of the LTCH money we paid goes to the training budget of the local LEA where you apply. If your $40 is going to help pay for the SWAT raid that comes in your door on a wrong-address warrant, and God forbid, you kill an honest cop who just got bad info, everyone loses. If they create a new database, rather than just use the one already in place, that's wasteful. Much better, IMHO, to put that $40 into helping turn a 2A-ambivalent legislator into a soidly-pro-2A legislator. Take them to dinner or better yet, the range, and let them see what it is they're legislating to affect. Want to pass down a legacy for those coming along after us? Let's fight to make Indiana the most gun-friendly state in the Union. Constitutional Carry will help that. Wide reciprocity (we already are recognized in well over half the country!) will help that. Just paying money because someone in a uniform has his hand out, asking you to pay for something you already have will not help advance liberty.
Blessings,
Bill
Bottom line, my whole life I've had to pay for that right and I don't want future generations to have that burden and I'm smart enough to understand how government works and what the ISP has to have in the form of a budget allowance to make a change in the existing system.
If this is going to work, there HAS to be a funding allowance in the ISP's budget to make the changes and simple as it sounds utilizing the existing database, bureaucracy always comes with a ridiculous price tag to accomplish the simplest of tasks the private sector can make happen in a fraction of the time and cost.
As Kirk eluded to how can one willfully take a pass on trading a Queen for a King under these circumstances? Repealing the LTCH is far too important and I want everyone's grandkids to be free to practice their rights unencumbered and if it takes a few more bucks to make it happen and be done with it so be it your never going to win liberty back by simply lending politicians a vote at the polls there's always a price to be paid.
I'm willing to do my part right here and now by any means necessary for the benefit of everyone so we can enjoy some liberties that have been denied to us and unjustly taxed because the people who came before us were to weak and divided and allowed the LTCH to happen in the first place.
I won't live to see it happen, but imagine the trend in years to come as state residents come together and get constitutional carry approved in more and more states as time passes.
It took the bastards at state and federal levels the better part of a hundred years to shove all this regulation on law abiding Americans, let's get our heads back in the game and realize the value in taking rights back at state level and hopefully effect more positive change nationwide.