With 2024 just days away, it’s time for a lot of places to look back on 2023 and evaluate how things went. It’s not just places or groups, but people as well, since we can learn from both our successes and our failures.

I’m not going to get into all of that because literally no one reads anything I write for that reason.

Instead, you’re hear to talk about guns, the Second Amendment, firearm carry laws, and all of that stuff, and so we should do that retrospective look–or talk about what others have said in their own looks–and discuss that.

Because, let’s face it, that’s much cooler.

And, to be fair, the news seems pretty good.

2023 was a momentous year for permitless carry gun laws, with the U.S. officially becoming a constitutional carry-majority nation this spring.

“The gun control lobby and their allies pledged to dismantle self-defense laws and the Second Amendment. That strategy has backfired. In 2021, there were 16 states with NRA Constitutional Carry. Just three years later, there are 27 states. Americans in 11 states stood with freedom and the NRA,” NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre exclusively told Fox News Digital.

Constitutional carry laws allow legal residents to carry a concealed firearm without a permit, effectively eliminating the need for qualifying residents to ask the government for permission to carry.

Last year closed with 25 states passing permitless carry laws, with Georgia’s new law taking effect at the start of 2023. Florida had the honor of officially tipping America as a constitutional carry-majority nation in March, when the state Senate approved the bill and sent it to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk for his signature.

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Florida was soon followed by Nebraska, where Republican Gov. Jim Pillen signed his state’s version into law.

Of course, this made at least some of the big gun control news look downright ridiculous. I’m talking about California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed 28th Amendment that would codify certain anti-gun policies in the Constitution itself.

Since the amendment process requires states to sign off on it at 26 states are described here as constitutional carry–for the record, Florida is permitless carry, not constitutional since open carry is prohibited completely–outnumber those without such laws, it seems highly unlikely that such an amendment will be ratified.

Firearm carry is slowly becoming far easier for people to start. In most states now, they don’t even have to get a permit, though there are still benefits to getting one. Instead, though, they just start carrying their firearm.

That’s a big win.

Further, despite numerous “carry killer” bills, there’s been plenty of hope even in more anti-firearm carry states.

First, a lot of those “carry killer” bills aren’t doing well in the courts. While parts of them might well survive, particular involving government property, most of those measures are going to fall. When you couple that with the fact that they can’t discriminate against anyone for any reasons in issuing permits, that’s still a huge step forward.

Anti-gunners didn’t take it easy in 2023. They just got their butts handed to them on a number of fronts. Firearm carry was just the biggest one, and we should all be happy about that.

We should also dig in because 2024 isn’t going to be a cakewalk by any stretch of the imagination.