Recently I got into a discussion with someone who had moved away from California. He asserted that all the litigation didn't matter and that we as civil rights supporters were not winning and, as usual, we Californians should just leave. I asked him an important question and it should be telling that he didn't answer that question publicly. I asked him how populous his supposed free state was. He privately replied that his new state's population was 3,800,000 (Oregon) and continued to accuse California gun rights supporters of being Baghdad Bob for saying that we're winning. There is no more serious case of Battered Gun Owner Syndrome or lack of understanding of what is actually going on in the US. Because I think this attitude may be a bit too common, I'm compelled to comment on it.
In one county alone, CGF was able to bring the right to carry arms in public to the 1,400,000 California residents of Sacramento County who simply have to write "for self protection" on their "good cause" line of their carry license application. To put this in perspective, just one of the smaller counties in California is 37% of the population of a state. Brushed off is the fact that California's ban on some semiautomatic rifles, handguns, and shotguns has been eviscerated. In 2000 who would have thought that ARs and AKs would be common sight in California gun stores?

Lost completely in the pessimists view is the unseen, which at least I somewhat understand. The number of cases where charges get dropped or a spouse of someone temporarily barred (legitimately) from firearms gets to keep the combo to the gun safe instead of losing the guns to the state are common now. But these events don't make news. One CGF "case that got away" was a domestic violence incident where the wife who was the agressor was arrested but the husband who was the victim had his guns seized. As soon as the city that wanted to keep the firearms realized the gun owner was serious about suing them, they caved. Ditto San Francisco public housing and their ban on gun possession in the home. Many of gun rights wins nationwide come like this as even DC backed down over the California Handgun Roster rather than fight in Hanson and they are continuing to back down in the face of the Lane litigation.

But here is where the real trouble is. The Constitutional minimum of the right to arms will not be set in Oregon. It will be set in states like California, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York. That minimum will be extremely persuasive even in the supposedly free states. Oregon is suffering the influx of anti-gun Californians. Are Oregon residents really sure that they can win the demographic battle and avoid the possible rules that the courts deem are good enough for the right to bear arms when the new California immigrants start passing their bad gun ideas?

Further, the battered gun owner doesn't think we win unless we win it all, in one fell swoop, immediately. They ignore that there will never be a municipal, county, or state ban on handgun possession. Read that last sentence again. It's early and we have to move incrementally. On the reverse, I'm sure that there were those who are anti-gun who were angry when the Brady Campaign only moved incrementally against gun ownership. We're doing the same in reverse, but both the ground we start on and the ground we're gaining are far closer to the 1790 and 1870 state of affairs than, e.g. the Brady Campaign wishes to admit.

Just because cases lose at District Court, doesn't mean they aren't important or aren't destined to win. What became Heller, the McDonald case, and the Ezell win were all loses in the District Courts. What we're seeing is not dissimilar to what happened in the South during the civil rights movement. Lower courts were hesitant to break with local tradition, but courts of appeals had the strength to follow the actual constitution and not the unreconstructed version then applied in the South. Not all courts of appeals will be honest about the right to keep and bear arms, but even some losses there will help create the circuit splits that drive the Supreme Court to review these issues and clarify real respect for the right to keep and bear arms.

We are winning but we have not won. Having people with Battered Gun Owner Syndrome dishearten the quiet listening gun owner who shows up or supports these efforts with their pocket book does no one any good. Bully for you guy who escaped California. Selfishly, you have a better set of practical rights to keep and carry firearms for now. But in pessimism and gloat, the battered gun owner doesn't even catch that he's undermining his own rights by demotivating those who have to win to create a robust right to keep and bear arms that is the only protection of everyone's gun rights over the long run.