A Californian living on the border with Arizona, Nevada or Oregon cannot legally buy a modern defensive rifle like an FAL or an AR15. His neighbors living just across the state lines in all the neighboring states can. Either Californians are all terribly untrustworthy, criminal and murderous or they are merely less free than their neighbors. Because criminals are already prohibited from buying or owning guns under federal law, so all the restrictions are on the law-abiding people who are not felons.
A resident of Illinois can look at the neighbors a few steps over the border with any neighboring state and know that they are able to carry sidearms legally. Either Illinoisans are all terribly untrustworthy, criminal and murderous or they are merely less free than their neighbors.
A person moving from New Jersey to the neighboring Pennsylvania pays lower taxes and gets so many civil rights back that the move feels like emigrating from the USSR. So we can safely conclude that residents of New Jersey are less free than their Western neighbors.
Having seen first-hand how much effort, time and risk my parents wagered on getting our family out of the USSR, I am at a loss why so few leave the oppressive, restrictive and overtaxed jurisdictions when the effort required to move is so much less. On the plus side, most people who leave have more initiative and marketable skills than average, and so improve their new residences while their old locations decline further and further. The increase in geographic stratification is beginning to show, and hopefully illustrates why being more free is better than being less free.
