The debate about paying for the "right" to carry a firearm is old and ongoing - maybe it's a dead horse and maybe it's not - but the right to carry a gun is not as unfettered as many would have you believe. I know what the law, i.e., the Constitution, says, but restrictions on gun rights have been held lawful so many times, even in the two big SCOTUS victories recently, Heller and MacDonald cases, that griping about restrictions and fees seems a lot like a tempest in a teapot - it has no effect and it has no meaningful impact on the real world.
Voting is not actually a right guaranteed by the Constitution, anyway. Everyone thinks it is but it doesn't say that anywhere. Qualifications for voting exist. The Supreme Court has said that the Constitution “does not protect the right of all citizens to vote, but rather the right of all qualified citizens to vote.” It is state legislatures that wield the power to decide who is “qualified.” As a result, voting is not a right, but a privilege granted or withheld at the discretion of local and state governments.
The Constitution explicitly prohibits discrimination in granting the franchise based on a person’s race, sex, or (adult) age via the 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments. The 24th Amendment also bars disenfranchisement via poll taxes. But those protections are like a house with no foundation. States and other governments can and do disenfranchise individuals and groups of citizens, and so long as they do it without provable bias, it’s entirely legal.
(c) 2005 Jeff Milchen
Beyond the Voting Rights Act: Why We Need a Constitutional Right to Vote
So let's not let the so-called right to vote overlap on gun rights. Neither are unfettered and both get restricted in a variety of ways. One difference is that the ban on a poll tax basically says you cannot charge fees for voting. But nothing stops fees for gun permits. And so forth.
As for the folks who buy the wrong guns to carry and, therefore, don't carry, it's simply a matter of teaching them and hoping the teaching takes effect. Nothing helps if folks refuse to learn and understand. Buying a S&W M&P 9mm like this:
Product: Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm
because someone told you that 17 rounds is what you'll need to defend yourself is a very impractical to the solution to concealed carry for almost anyone. Large folks who wear loose outer garments can conceal big pistols. The rest of us are quite well served with much smaller guns.
Keep in mind gun is for personal defense not assaulting a beach.
That's what your students, whether you're a professional firearms instructor or just teaching a friend, need to be made to understand. If you really need 17 rounds you either are in the wrong place at the wrong time* or you're venturing out into places normal people fear to go - OR - *you're just very unlucky. Those service sized pistols won't cut it in the normal concealed carry world. New shooters need to get a grasp of that fact.
