…at least, that’s what the usual suspects are screaming about Arizona at the moment, for having the temerity to claim that existing laws governing illegal immigration should be treated as if they were, well, laws.

There are people making careful, reasoned arguments about the constitutionality of duplicating federal laws at the state level, some quite cogent, but they’re not driving the argument. Indeed, they’re not even allowed onto the bus, as the headlines shriek “racist!” and “police state!”, pretending that border control is a Republican invention not practiced anywhere else in the world.

It reminds me a great deal of the hysteria over shall-issue concealed-carry legislation. There, it was “gun-nuts blowing away anyone who cuts in line at the grocery!”; here, it’s “racist nazi cops going after everyone brown!”. I expect the long-term results to be pretty much the same: little or no abuse of the new laws, less crime, no loss of civil rights, and more states jumping on the bandwagon as they observe the results.

The hysterics labeled Florida “the gunshine state” for passing CCW reform. It didn’t happen. Now they’re calling Arizona the new Nazi Germany, and that’s not going to happen, either.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Arizona, which has always had open carry with no need for a license, and which quickly adopted shall-issue carry with reciprocity, recently went to concealed carry with no need for a license. Allowing any adult to carry a concealed handgun doesn’t square up with the “papers, please” future promised by the pro-illegal pundits, not that they’ll notice.

[Note: any comments attempting to equate “immigration” and “illegal immigration” will be deleted unread; they’re quite different things, and opposition to one has nothing whatsoever to do with opinions on the other]