Minnesota is, like many states, facing the possibility of embracing gun control measures so politicians don’t have to do any real work to make their states safer. Rather than look at the root causes of their problems and try to fix those, they simply opt to regulate guns and law-abiding gun owners. After all, it’s easier that way. It’s the political version of the guy who does his book report every year on Island of the Blue Dolphins.

However, gun owners are generally not fans of new gun control laws. That’s especially true of people who go to the trouble of getting a carry permit.

And in Minnesota, more people than ever have carry permits.

A record 301,268 Minnesota civilians have permits to carry a firearm in public, a number that has nearly doubled over the past six years.

Minnesota sheriffs issued 51,404 new five-year permits in 2019, with residents from Hennepin, Anoka and Dakota counties applying in the highest numbers.

Minnesota’s growing number of firearm carriers comes as some gun owners across the state are concerned about new proposals at the State Capitol that could make it harder to buy firearms. Other states have seen a jump in permit applications as similar gun measures were being debated.

Permit holder Sarah Cade Hauptman said that carrying a firearm “gives you more options to respond to dangerous situations. It’s all about having a choice and a chance.”

Hauptman, of Maplewood, said she frames her thinking about the law in terms of being a woman and a feminist.

“I view my gun as a tool that gives me parity of force with bigger, stronger or more numerous opponents,” she said. “I have the ability to enforce decisions about my body and my boundaries without depending on others. … I have more options than just hoping for rescue. I’m my own rescue.”

Of course, she’s right.

Unsurprisingly, there are still those who oppose concealed carry at all. They seem to think that everyone who walks around with a gun is either a criminal, an idiot, or both. Historically, that hasn’t been born out by statistics in any state with concealed carry, including Minnesota, but they continue to go on believing their own self-delusions about how more guns make us more violent.

That’s simply not the case.

Yet with more people than ever with carry permits, the real threat isn’t to the public but to the ability for anti-Second Amendment groups to push forward still more gun control legislation. These people represent a potentially growing group of politically-engaged proponents for the right to keep and bear arms. They’re people who aren’t going to take kindly to new laws and regulations which seek to infringe on that right.

They’re scared, but they’re pretending that fear is born of a concern about being shot, when it’s really nothing more than a concern about becoming irrelevant.

I have news for them though. They’ve always been irrelevant. It’s just that now, many Americans are starting to realize it and aren’t rolling over to keep them happy.