For several months now we've been hearing that a House vote on H.R. 38, the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, is imminent. The government shutdown may have stymied a vote for several weeks last fall, but hopefully the bill will soon receive a floor vote in the House of Representatives.
While the odds of passage in the lower chamber are pretty good, HR 38 faces an uphill fight in the Senate. Still, The Trace is out with a new explainer on what national right to carry reciprocity would mean, and as you might expect, the analysis seems designed to inflame, not inform.
When it comes to carrying a gun, the laws of the state you’re carrying in apply. That means reciprocity is not a blanket permission slip. “Typically, the only thing that really transfers from state to state is recognizing the validity of the permit,” McCourt said. “For example, if Michigan says you can’t carry in certain locations, that applies to everybody carrying in Michigan — even if your home state doesn’t have those restrictions.”
To build on that example: Say a permit holder from Louisiana is visiting Michigan, which prohibits carrying guns in bars, churches, schools, day cares, and sports arenas or stadiums. Even though Louisiana doesn’t have all the same place-based restrictions, the Louisiana visitor would still need to follow Michigan’s rules while carrying in Michigan.
But when it comes to acquiring a gun, the laws of the gun owner’s home state generally apply. That’s where the “race to the bottom” concern comes in: A person from a state without universal background check requirements, like Louisiana, could purchase a gun in a private sale without a background check and still legally carry that gun in a stricter state like Michigan, where the same purchase would have required a background check had it been done there.
“Michigan couldn’t say, ‘You didn’t go through a background check, so you can’t have that gun here,’ because the person followed Louisiana’s rules when acquiring it,” McCourt said.
No, but Michigan can say that if you can't legally possess a gun in Louisiana, you can't legally possess one in Michigan either. Remember, permitless carry laws don't circumvent prohibitions on gun ownership for felons and those convicted of crimes punishable by more than a year in prison, those adjudicated as mentally defective, those in this country illegally, and other categories of disqualification.
Given the anti-gun ideology at the heart of The Trace, it seems clear that the purpose of its explainer is to make national concealed carry reciprocity as scary as possible, and to do that it has to make readers believe permitless carry states are lawless hellholes of rampant violence.
While there isn’t research directly measuring the effects of reciprocity itself, the evidence on loosening concealed carry requirements generally is fairly consistent, said Cassandra Crifasi, a researcher and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
“Everything we know about what happens in states when they’ve removed permitting requirements — whether it’s violent crime, shootings, shootings by police, any of those sorts of things,” Crifasi said, “the best evidence suggests that those things would go up and therefore make everyone less safe.”
If that's all that Crifasi knows then she's not paying much attention to what's actually happening in permitless carry states. Violent crime is dropping at or near record pace in cities like New Orleans, Birmingham, and Miami, just as it is across the country. Permitless carry doesn't inherently lead to an increase in crime, because most folks who are lawfully carrying a gun aren't going to commit a violent crime to begin with. A small number of criminals are responsible for a large portion of violent crime, and they're not legally carrying, even in states where no permit is required.
Critics also warn the bill would undermine the remaining training and licensing systems in states with stricter laws like New York, New Jersey, or Massachusetts. “Many states that require a permit also require you to get training,” McCourt said. “Nationwide reciprocity could neuter those training requirements nationwide.”
Proponents often compare national concealed carry reciprocity to driver’s licenses. But Crifasi said the similarities are only superficial.
“With driver’s licenses, you have to take a vision test and a written test, and then you have to pass a proficiency test” that requires actually driving a vehicle, she said. But concealed carry permit requirements vary widely from state to state, with most not requiring live-fire training.
“We’re comparing apples and pineapples when you talk about concealed carry and a driver’s license, because in more than half of states now you don’t need to get a license at all,” Crifasi said. “That would be like saying, ‘Oh, you live in Texas and you don’t need a driver’s license? Cool, go drive in New York City without getting a driver’s license, no problem.’ It doesn’t logically track the same way.”
Driving is also a privilege, not a right. And again, with more than half the country no longer requiring a permit to carry, we can see for ourselves whether out-of-state visitors are committing large numbers of crimes. That doesnt seem to be the case. Instead, we've got people like Kyle Culotta arrested for the "crime" of bringing his lawfully purchased and possessed firearms from Arizona into Massachusettts without first obtaining permission from Massachusetts authorities.
Crifasi offered up hypothetical dangers surrounding universal reciprocity, but completely ignored the real world harm that comes from a lack of reciprocity. People shouldn't be jailed or turned into felons for believing that their right to keep and bear arms crosses state lines like every other enumerated right, but that's happening on a regular basis in states like Massachusetts and New Jersey.
Even under a national reciprocity system, those anti-gun states could still impose training mandates on residents and require anyone carrying a firearm to abide by their restrictions on time, manner, and place of carrying (at least until the courts strike down those laws). National right to carry reciprocity doesn't negate state law. It simply recognizes the fact that the right to keep and bear arms isn't a second-class right and remains in effect even after you leave the confines of the state that you call home.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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