HA! The brave Pilot's union is for it, and the girls and pansies of the Stew's union is against it. Kind of a microcosm of the gun debate.
If our society in general had kept the "armed citizen" concept over the generations, this wouldn't be much of a problem, but to just immediately go back to that right now would require quite a bit of re-adjustment. Obviously I am WAY in favor of the concept, but am not naieve enough to think it would happen overnight, you just can't change an entire nation's concepts that quickly. For instance, I am against "carry permits", as I see it as being unconstitutional to the max, but realistically, that will have to be a full nationwide step-universal recognized "permitting"-until we can seque into 'vermont style". Until any person's "permit" is accepted in all the 50 states, wherever thay happen to wealk, government building or not, anyplace, and municipalities, including NYC and chicago and other really bad places, exactly the same as a drivers "license", then we will continue to have this schism, and millions will fear it, and reject it, stewardii union as well.
People have to be shown byoverwhelming in your face example that it won't result in their (unfounded) fears of "the wild wild west constant shootouts" they seem to think will happen. Once we have that in place, then maybe we can finish dismantling all the other laws, including the 'permitting". Well, unless we can elect a slate of constitutionalists to the presidency and both national houses, at the exact same time, but that would require A-either one or the other major dominant parties radically change who runs them and what is promoted by them, or B- people stop being afraid of third parties as much, and perhaps a third party gets in. Or choice C, which is outright counter revolution to take back the nation from the dictators who seized the nation in a series of step-by-planned-step stealth coups over the years. Choice c is the scariest way, most people don't even understand it has happened, they would argue it hasn't happened (even here), even though there is ample evidence it has, so it's the least likely by far to occur It's extremely far down the list of probabilities.
Choice A is the best solution, this would probably be the republican party, but it means that the entire grassroots republicans cease supporting the bulk of the party favorites,98% of them, and stop sending them money. they would have to acknowledge "mistakes" in the past, which isn't a normal human thing to do. So, that's not likely to occur either. The democratic party is so out to lunch big time on this, so that isn't going to happen with them, either. The existing third parties each have several single issue points that hardly no one else outside the hard core membership can deal with, that none of them can get off the ground too much, they self -destruct, with the medias non-help. So that is out.
So,my analysis is, we are boned, and will stay boned. Unless, something so very unexpected and strange, something that no one anticipates happens, which causes a major paradigm shift back towards "freedoms" being of any sort of practical value to people. Now, what that might be, I can't say for sure. Nothing so far that has been inflicted on the US people has caused them to demand change beyond normal talking about it and complaining and back and forth voting in basically the same people over and over again. Mostly. How bad it has to get for this to happen, to change, what an incident or occurence might be, no idea. Can't even begin to guess anymore, UFO's landing everywhere and barbecuing people maybe. A 99% tax rate. Nationalization of the people and forced family separation-even then I'm not so sure that most people wouldn't go along with it after several pretty bad "examples" were made of anyone.region.area who said "no" singly or as an ad hoc group. I think even a chip implant could be wildely accepted, if enough scary situations were thrown at people, ie, some more domestic terrorism. Food and water being made unavaialble unless you lined up, got the vaccinations and an ID chip to make sure you could prove tyou aren't a 'terrorist". Any carry around piece of paper or plastic thing ID can be forged, so, the next logical deal is the implanted biometric chip. That's where we are directly headed, and it's a very short time frame ahead, real short. Most people would go along with it by the third day of no water and no food. They would give up. Most people have never even come close to three days without water or food, I honestly don't think they realise what happens to humans and their thought patterns and what they would accept or not accept at that point.
Yes, I am pessimisstic, mostly from not seeing anything that would tend to make me believe otherwise over the years. Even guns, in a large state like california, no mass saying "no", it hasn't happened. 35 million people, the laws keep getting passed, step by step by step, no "saying no" has occured. We've (as a nation) totally accepted private confiscations without trial,(from disputed taxes to ownership of substances or weapons, all the way to mass regional confiscations like in klamath and other areas and entire groups), we've accepted checkpoints to view your papers, executive/bureaucratic edict-run government. Judicial decisons not involving citizen juries, that's a biggee right there everyone "accepts". No saying "no" on that one. Once a generation in the past totally accepted a government demainding they couldn't own gold, gold for pete's sake, the government demanded they turn it over to them. some hid their gold, bt no saying "no" outloud occurred. Wars waged by executive fiat. No one says no, from highest general to rawest recruit. Everything gets 'accepted" without fail.
Like, what's left, really? There's tanks at the airports right now. People are walking by machine gun toting troopies in our cities. they started the secret tribunals, but it's not even considered anything strange, after all it's only the *&^%%^ that are being affected. Uh huh, that'll last a long time, yep. People readily accept massive vote fraud, every election, totally accepted. It's joked about on the teevee by the standup comics, but it's still accepted as business as usual by 99% of the people. 1/2 the people have ceased voting, it's not worth it to them to even go stand in line. Something else is more important, whatever that reason is,is immaterial, it happens. And that number is for a presidential election, lesser elections the numbers of "not voting" at all is even higher than 1/2. On any particular saturday, some 'big game' someplace gets more citizen interest than anything else going on, usually, excepting very large breaking news that is quickly forgotten. It's much easier, usually, to pull a crowd to a sporting event, or a concert, than it is to a political rally, by far easier, no comparison.
This forum is by no means representative of the country at-large, not even close. Here you can see activism and interest that is numerical magnitudes higher (10x +) than actually exists in the population generally speaking, but it's a tiny minority as compared to the bulk of the people.
We all tend to think pretty differently, it's important here, although there are wide ranging views here, and different issues get hotly debated, by and large, 'politics and government" gets short shrift in most folks minds, it's just so far down their list of priorities it's not even in the top 20. It's lower than not important over there, where the big old crowds of tens of millions are.
That's why I am pessimisstic of any meaningful change, beyond what an individual can do to change themselves, if they are so inclined.
I haven't given up "hope", but in day to day meatworld, I go on my practical way with the assumption that it will get worse, until a combination of normal human nature, very bad domestic policies, and uncontrollable chaos theory world events, leads to a pretty major global war using huge amounts of WMD. No weapons system ever invented has not ultimately resulted in it's widespread usages in warfare. Some took longer than others, but that's the exact historical example we have to look at so far, so that has got to be human nature, and that isn't changing that much..
Hmm, sorta thread drift here, one thing leads to another and another, etc, so excuse me, it just happened.