Why not use Vermont instead?
The reality is that under any of the national reciprocity bills that I've seen or heard of, Vermonters will actually suffer unless your state institutes a permission slip process where none exists now. I'm sure you already knew that, Charles, and most supporters of national reciprocity have heard it before, even if they don't understand why it's true. When people say they don't care that Vermonters will be less free under national reciprocity, they prove that selfishness, not freedom, not rights advocacy, is at the bottom line of their wish to get it passed.
The only thing from the federal level that can "help" gun owners is for the Supreme Court to "interpret" the 2A in a manner consistent with the words contained within it. That's never going to happen though. Justices are cowards, usurpers, agenda-driven hacks every bit as much as the legislators, presidents and regulators they were created to protect us from. So the best we can hope for is to continue to work at the state level. Even if the worst gun rights states stay the same or get worse, there are still enclaves (like VT, AZ, AK, MT and one that I'm forgetting right now) where the citizen has the most freedom to choose how/when/where or if to carry without government getting between them and their decision-making processes. Even taking the few constitutional carry states out of the equation, the majority of states are much easier to get papered in than NJ or IL or whatever most rights-oriented people would call "the worst" states.
But under no circumstance can it legitimately be said that expanded liberty is served by forcing the freest state to institute freedom-killing legislation in order to benefit from the freedom-expansion legislation, and that's the exact position Vermont would be put in under national reciprocity. As Charles alluded to, the best national reciprocity would be every state using what little sovereignty it has left to repeal all carry laws/restrictions and adopt Vermont's hands-off approach. Unfortunately, that ain't going to happen either, so get your states to do what Alabama, Kansas and other states have done by accepting permission slips from every state that issues them until every state recognizes every other state's permit, and national reciprocity will be realized. It still won't help Vermont carriers, but it will keep the federal beast out of it, and that's always, 100% of the time, better than the alternative.
Blues
