Which is the most gun friendly state?

[Protest]

Which, based on your research and opinion, is the most gun friendly state? Or, if I could rephrase, which state is the most friendly towards it's gun owning citizens?

 

[trnsplntfrmohio]

Alaska. No permit to conceal or open carry. You just do it.
Same with Vermont, at least they will issue a permit though and New Hampshire allows Vermont residents to carry with out permit.

 

[Tactical Dave]

TEXAS and Alaska.

 

[MTC]

Current, overall: Alaska. They used to not have preemption, though. Don't know if that's still the case.

Vermont: close, but no suppressors

2nd Tier: Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana

 

[trnsplntfrmohio]

TEXAS and Alaska.

Texas is down there with Ohio. Very strict and no gun signs are the law also no OC in texas at all. At least in ohio you can OC (but carrying in a car in ohio is cc)

 

[44 MAGNUM SHOOTER]

Alaska for sure

 

[DragonGunner]

According to the Brady Campaign....They hate Utah..or is it Nevada? They
have the only score of 0...which means very good to us! Indiana was rated
at 8, anyscore under 10 is very bad to the anti's, very good to us. CA was
their favorite state for gun controls with a score of 78 I think....CA also had
the highest crime.....the 0 state had the lowest crime. So the antis love the
anti gun states with high crime, an hate the pro gun states with low crime...?????

 

[Protest]

Getting lots of varying opinions here, very interesting.

 

[6birds]

Alaska. No permit to conceal or open carry. You just do it.

As a bonus, you can see Russia from there, so I'm told.

 

[Tactical Dave]

Texas is down there with Ohio. Very strict and no gun signs are the law also no OC in texas at all. At least in ohio you can OC (but carrying in a car in ohio is cc)

Wow, did not know that.

 

[Bill of Rights]

According to the Brady Campaign....They hate Utah..or is it Nevada? They
have the only score of 0...which means very good to us! Indiana was rated
at 8, anyscore under 10 is very bad to the anti's, very good to us. CA was
their favorite state for gun controls with a score of 78 I think....CA also had
the highest crime.....the 0 state had the lowest crime. So the antis love the
anti gun states with high crime, an hate the pro gun states with low crime...?????

It was Utah. They don't even prohibit those with CFPs from carrying at K-12... The Bradys REALLY hate that, especially since in the over ten years since UT passed that, they've not had one school shooting there.

I do think it's interesting that the Bradys come out with their "grades" for each state every two years, and they're published about a month before the end of the legislative session. See, IN gets two demerits from them for having a license required by/from the state to sell handguns, we get two for colleges/universities not being required to allow guns, and we get two for employers not being forced to allow guns on property. We only got six demerits this time around... last time we got two more for not having a "shoot first law", as they call it. (those were wrongfully assessed; we had had Castle Doctrine for almost 2 years at that point)

So... as of July 1 of this year, we will have rectified two of those demerits.

As for most gun-friendly? I think the way to answer that is to set up some objective criteria, but I don't want to do that and give the Bradys anything else to change their standards regarding (not that that would really be a change; in the 4-5 years I've been aware of it, I've yet to see them use the same criteria two scoring cycles in a row.)

IN only forbids SBS by state law. Other than that, long guns are basically unregulated by law (though, funny thing... we don't seem to have a rash of crimes committed with long guns.... hmmm....)
With a LTCH, there are a few (12, I think, half of which are school-related) places you cannot carry under state law (though gov't entities may prohibit on property they control and any law in place before 1994 is grandfathered) Other than that, we have pre-emption.
Signs have no force of law here. OC is not prohibited nor even mentioned in the law. No worries about "printing". No restriction on banks, bars, free-standing churches (per se), restaurants that serve alcohol, businesses that derive more than 51% of their revenue from sales of alcohol, polling places, places of public gathering.
Insofar as purchase, we have no state-level restriction on private sale of firearms to other residents of this state, we have no prohibition on purchase of more than one firearm at a time, no waiting periods, no "permit to purchase", no gun registration, no restriction on type of ammo (i.e. JHPs)

Various states in this country have the above scattered about. I'd like to see OC without permit or even Constitutional Carry, but I think we need to consider that many states that have relaxed laws on how you carry often have stricter laws on where you do so.

I can concede the restriction on carry in penal environments, though I'd be much more comfortable with a "lockers must be provided" scenario there; outside of penal facilities, I see no reason why people should not be able to carry unrestricted in terms of what, how many, or when or where.

All in all, I'd say if we're not the top state, we're certainly close to it.

Blessings,
Bill

 

[melensdad]

TEXAS and Alaska.

Texas?

No sir. They specifically OUTLAW civilian Open Carry and, as stated, allow for NO GUN signs to carry the force of law. New Mexico also allows NO GUN signs to carry the force of law, as do several other states (like Ohio).

 

[evansvillethompsongunner]

1.) Utah
2.) Alaska
3.) Vermont
4.) Indiana

 

[Wabatuckian]

I sorta' like it here. Permit, but lifetime. Overall, there's just not much you can't do and not much you can't carry.

Josh

 

[yotewacker]

Indiana will accept a gun permit from anywhere in the world. That is the very good.

 

[cosermann]

This question is asked as if there's a simple answer. It's not as simple as "no permit/license" required. There are a whole constellation of laws related to gun possession, carrying, use, sale, etc; laws to curb 'trafficking', background checks, laws to promote 'child safety', local/state AWBs, lists of prohibited places/gun free zones, reciprocity, license fees, unlicensed open carry, etc. It can be a somewhat fuzzy determination.

One way to get at this is to use the Brady Campaign score card (as has been mentioned). (Yeah, I know. ) But Brady regularly comes out with what they call a scorecard where they rate states on the various gun-related criteria that get Brady's underwear in a bunch. If you take their scorecard and flip it on it's head, it makes decent tool for getting at what WE want to know.

I looked at the scorecard a couple of years ago (2008). Threw it into Excel, did some sorting, totaling, averaging, etc. After all that, the states fell into 3 fairly clear tiers. I color coded them green/yellow/red.

The most gun-friendly states (green) the way I analyzed them were:

KY, LA, OK - score 2
AK, MO, ND, UT, WV - score 4
Miss - score 5
AZ, AR, FL, ID, NM, SD - score 6
GA, KS, TN - score 7
IN, MT - score 8
SC, TX, VT, WY - score 9

The middle tier of states (yellow) were:

NE - score 10
MN, NV, NH - score 11
Maine, WI - score 12
OH - score 13
Alabama - score 15
CO, IA - score 16
OR, VA, WA - score 18
NC - score 20

The worst states (red) were:

DE, MI - score 22
PA - score 26
IL - score 28
HI - score 43
RI - score 47
NY - score 51
Maryland - score 53
Conn, Mass - score 54
NJ - score 63
CA - score 79

It's not a comprehensive scorecard, or a perfect way to do it, but you can see it correlates pretty well with what most of us already instinctively/intuitively know.

It's also interesting to compare this with red state/blue state stats, stated indebtedness, taxes rates, etc. There ARE correlations, which just goes to show there's a worldview that leads to bad things. For example, 6 of the worst states above are also among the top 10 most indebted states, which are also blue (democrat) states. Big surprise, eh? Conversely 6 of the best states above are also among the top 10 least indebted states (and are either red or purple states). You get the idea, but I digress.

 

[JAMZ]

Texas with idaho a close second havent personally done alaska so only hearsay on that state

 

[Spanky46151]

It may not be considered actually "gun friendly" to a purist, but Indiana is considered the easiest state to obtain a personal protection permit. That is why some states don't offer reciprocity with us.

 

[Turn Key]

Wow, did not know that.

You really have to read up on Ohio's carry law, it's weird and changes a lot.

1.) Utah
2.) Alaska
3.) Vermont
4.) Indiana

I agree with our long named member above.



TK

 

[Ramen]

Texas with idaho a close second havent personally done alaska so only hearsay on that state

Texas has a reputation that doesn't match reality. Any state that outlaws open carry is way down on my list.

That is just shouting that guns are too evil for people to see them (unless carried by a law enforcement officer).