By Karen MacNutt,
Contributing Editor

January is named after the Roman god Janus. Janus was a strange being. He had a face on both sides of his head. It was said that Janus was looking backwards and forwards at the same time. Others, who were a little less kind, said Janus never knew if he were coming or going. Some would say that January is like Janus. It is a time we look back on the past year and look forward to the new year but we never know if we will be progressing forward or falling backwards.

W&G has been around for 20 years. For me, that equals some 120 articles. Time has flown by. There have been many changes in that time. Some for the better. On the other hand, some things never seem to change.

The status of women has improved greatly over the last 20 years. Occupations once closed to women are now open. Women are quite commonly police officers and firefighters. The number of women lawyers and judges has grown tremendously.

Women are more readily accepted in the shooting community. Manufacturers of sporting equipment now make gear designed to fit women. W&G can take credit for much of that.

Women have been in combat, an event dictated by necessity more than cultural acceptance. There is now a woman four-star general. The head of the Women's Army Corps during World War II was only a Colonel. The first woman to become a one-star general was promoted about 1970. It took almost 40 years for another woman to get those other three stars.

Women still have a hard time obtaining high executive positions. The fuss about Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton was based more on gender bias than in qualifications or political philosophy. Americans will accept women in high administrative positions but apparently are not yet ready to accept them in high executive positions. That is something we must work on in the next 20 years.

There have been great changes for gunowners. On the forward side, the vast majority of states now have concealed-carry handgun licenses. More importantly, only six states still allow the police discretionary powers in issuing licenses. Most states have defined standards which, if met, require the license to be issued. For women living in those states, there are no more problems with some male police officer saying, "Why would a little lady like you want to have a gun? Someone would just take it away from you and use it against you."

Those states with "shall issue" concealed-carry handgun licenses have conclusively proven that the world will not come to an end if you allow all people of good character to carry a gun, if they choose to do so. Looking forward, we must work on bringing due process and fairness to those six states with discretionary permits.

Gunowners were able to get Congress to pass the Firearms Owners Protection Act. That act allows licensed gunowners to travel through various states with their guns without being subject to arrest for not having a local permit. The gun, however, must be unloaded and locked in a case. That means that Americans cannot carry a gun for self defense when traveling interstate unless they have carefully checked the laws of each state they intend to pass through. It also creates a problem for boat owners who travel the coastal waters. They do not have easy access to 911 help. Piracy both on the high seas and criminal action against yachts in port is a growing problem. Small boats are particularly vulnerable.

Congress has not yet passed a full reciprocity statute which requires each state give full faith and credit to the firearms licenses of other states. There is no public safety issue served by one state refusing to recognize the license of another. Congress's inaction has been countered, in part, by a growing number of states that, by state law, grant reciprocity to the firearms licenses of other states. We must continue to work in this area until either Congress or all the states pass laws that allow licensed gunowners to travel freely throughout the United States.

In the 1990s Congress passed an "Assault Weapons" bill and then allowed the law to expire, or "sunset" a number of years later. The ban achieved no measurable results during its enactment and, now that it has ended, there is still no measurable change in public safety that can be attributed to the removal of the act. There was no increase in crimes involving "assault weapons." As far as public safety was concerned, the assault weapons legislation was meaningless. In spite of that, the anti-gun fanatics are again beating the drums for "assault weapon" legislation. We must resist them with logic and old fashioned political action. A law that restricts a person's freedom with no discernable public safety benefit, is not reasonable.

The term "fanatic" properly describes the anti-gun leadership. They are acting on pure personal prejudice. In 2008, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments on whether or not the District of Columbia could ban handguns. The briefs filed by the various anti-gun groups argued that banning guns was a "reasonable" regulation. What we in the leadership of firearms rights have always known, is now clear for the general public. For the anti-gun fanatics, nothing short of a total ban will satisfy their call for "reasonable regulation." They also admitted that when guns were banned in Washington, D.C., crime went up, not down. People who continue to insist on a policy that is a clear failure, are delusional. They are fanatics.

On the negative side, those who do not like guns have been successful in expanding the categories of people who are disqualified from owning guns. The so-called Lautenberg Law expanded federal disqualifications for gun ownership to people who had certain misdemeanor convictions. The same expansion of disqualifications has taken place in some states. In both cases the disqualifications have been applied retroactively. Changing the law to make an offense disqualifying retroactively is wrong. A penalty should not be increased after the fact. Those who propose this type of legislation say the disqualification is not a penalty but is a "civil disqualification" which, not being a "punishment," can be applied retroactively. Calling the penalty that flows from a criminal conviction a "civil disqualification" twists the Constitution so as to avoid the prohibition against ex post facto laws. We must resist all attempts to twist the Constitution when that twisting results in the loss of any basic right.

On the positive side, the most significant event for gunowners since the American Civil War, was the United States Supreme Court's ruling on the meaning of the Second Amendment in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. The decision was handed down in June of 2008. The high Court ruled that gun ownership was an individual right linked to the basic human right of self defense. The Court drove a stake of holly through the heart of that vampirish claim that the Second Amendment was a collective right that referred to the National Guard.

There are three very important parts to the Heller decision. First, the Court would not allow the clear words of the Constitution to be ignored. Nor would it do as the Massachusetts Supreme Court did and hold that the Constitutional provision protecting the right to have arms had no purpose in a modern world. The United State Supreme Court would not, by judicial ruling, delete a portion of the Bill of Rights. Second, the Court held that law-abiding Americans had the individual right to own a handgun in their own home unrelated to any militia service. Third, and most important, the Court ruled that the right of self defense is a basic human right.

Most Americans believe that they have a right to defend themselves and their property from attack. In Europe and in other areas of the world, however, that concept is not accepted. In England, if you use force to resist a thief, you could be charged with assault on the thief. You are not entitled to resist. Many of those who are against guns, are also against the right of self defense. They have the sincere, but naive, belief,that if you are totally helpless and you do not resist, that evil will somehow go away. The Heller case made it very clear that the right of self defense is a basic human right defended by the United States Constitution.

Heller upheld the meaning of the Constitution by only a 5-4 decision. The question of how the Heller decision will be applied is for the future. Will the Court expand Heller to rule that the Second Amendment is applicable to the states? Will it strike down laws that give licensing officers the power to deny gun licenses without standards? Will it require states to give full faith and credit to licenses of other states? Will it require that laws restricting gun ownership meet some compelling government interest? Or will it hold that Heller is only applicable in federal enclaves such as Washington, DC? Will it hold that just about any law short of an absolute ban is a "reasonable" exercise of the state's police power? All that is for the future.

This past year was an election year. Americans elected their first President with an acknowledged African-American ancestry. Hopefully this will put an end to the false argument that Blacks can not succeed in America.
Of more immediate significance is that the new Americans President is a liberal Democrat and, in addition to winning the Presidency, the Democrats have won both houses of Congress. One party rule is not good. It leads to an arrogance in government that fails to see alternatives and fails to consider the needs of any but the governing party. It was, in large measure, responsible for the inflexibility which caused the downfall of the Republican Party.

When one party controls, it is charged with all the responsibility for whatever makes the public unhappy. Although new Presidents are often given a grace period by the public of some one or two hundred days, by the end of the first year, the weight of office and public fickleness is in full application.

President Obama has a rough road ahead. His first attention must be the economy. It is not an easy problem to resolve. What has occurred is a free market correction. Businesses that are not equal to competition because they are not based on sound business models will fail. That is a necessary part of a free economy. If we artificially prop up businesses that are inefficient, that do not have the right product, or are not being run in a cost effective way, those businesses will never correct their faults. They will be given an unfair competitive advantage over good businesses. This is not the case of some natural disaster or act of terrorism that hurts viable businesses. In that case, government help is appropriate. This is a case where people took risks that were unwise or failed to take action on economic warnings to make needed changes. The economic upheaval was a long time coming and it will not be cured over night. Obama's task to show progress in this area is huge. He can make matters much worse if he takes the wrong action. On the other hand, he will take the credit when things improve even though that improvement will come in its own time.

Americans must continue to have faith in the future. They must manage their money wisely. They must resist going into debt. On the other hand, they must not stop investing and they must continue to spend in moderation. Recession can be a self-fulfilling prophecy if people panic.

Obama will have a hard time holding together the coalition that elected him. His hardcore supporters will expect him to move to the left with liberal political and social policies. Thousands of people who voted for him will want him to move to the center. They will become disillusioned if he moves too far to the left. Radical Black activists will be harder on Obama than they would be on any Caucasian president. If he does not enact their agenda, they will call him an "Uncle Tom" or other slurs. Deep down, they can not stand to see a minority get ahead because it does not fit their world view of being a victim of oppression. If he does enact their agenda, he will alienate other ethnic groups and isolate himself from main stream politics. Many of the Radical Black activists are socially liberal. The majority of mainstream Blacks are deeply religious and do not buy into social liberalism. They are a part, whether they know it or not, of the Christian right.

Black Americans were some of the first people to argue that the Second Amendment gave all Americans the right to keep and bear arms. Many of the first "gun control" laws were intended to prevent Blacks from being armed or being able to resist racial violence tolerated by corrupt public officials. Many of those "discretionary" issue firearms license states are holding on to the last of the Jim Crow laws.

Obama will not have an easy time with international politics. Once again, the expectations of others as to his behavior is apt to cause him problems. No one becomes President without having a high opinion of themselves. Whatever his or his wife's thoughts were about America in the past are now irrelevant. They are now the First Family and as such the essence of being an American. Disrespect to the United States is personal disrespect to Obama. I have no doubt that he will carry himself proudly both for his own self-respect and for that of his heritage.

Last year also saw the conviction of former FBI agent John Connolly on the charge of murder. Connolly abused his office and worked with organized crime in the Boston area. The corruption of the Bulger mob was such that they had local, state and federal law enforcement officers on their pay roll. The movie "The Departed" was based loosely on the Bulger mob. The big difference between real life and the movie was that in real life, the bad guy got away. This above all else should tell people why, in a free society, you can not limit gun ownership to the police and military.

Not all Democrats are anti-gun and not all Republicans are pro-gun. Gunowners must get involved in the Congressional races and in local elections. It is not too early to be looking forward to the mid-presidential term elections in two years. More important than party affiliation is the question of where do the candidates stand on individual rights in general and gun ownership in particular. It is unlikely the Democrats will be able to hold control of both houses in 2010. It is said that as soon as a person is elected to office he or she manages to alienate about a third of his or her supporters.

Whether in economics, business, or politics, the future belongs to those who plan and work for it. We have much work to do.