You can’t really expect the mainstream media to get the realities of concealed carry, much less national reciprocity. Well, OK. You can. But you’d be wasting your time.

In the case of the Boston Globe, what you see is the mainstream media not just getting it, but portraying a profound ignorance of the subject.

This fall, Mothers for Justice and Equality held their annual conference. It’s a local anti-violence organization led by Boston women — many of whom have lost a child to gun violence. They told us their stories, and what preventable violence stole from them. We discussed strategies for keeping our neighborhoods safe.

We still have a lot of work to do in Boston, but we’ve come a long way. We’re grateful for the common-sense laws that help us do our jobs. We will fight any national policy that threatens to send us backward.

That includes a bill called the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which passed in the House last week. It would force each state to recognize the concealed-carry standards of every other state, even those with dramatically weaker standards for who can get their hands on a gun. Given that the gun lobby has blocked the creation of a national database, it would be extremely difficult for local police to determine whether those out-of-state permits were even legitimate. Law enforcement all over the country strongly opposes this legislation.

Massachusetts is a national leader for safe, sensible gun policies. Not coincidentally, we have one of the lowest rates of gun-related deaths in the country. Anyone who receives a gun license in our state has to pass safety training and age requirements. Applicants who have been convicted of a felony or domestic violence, or who have been institutionalized for mental illness, do not get licenses. Boston also requires people to pass live-fire testing, and we prohibit people from carrying guns in certain areas, like school grounds. Furthermore, if a gun owner wants to carry a concealed weapon, they must make an additional showing of a need to police before they can be granted an unrestricted license. These laws have helped us prevent tragedies.

If the US Senate passes Concealed Carry Reciprocity, people from other states who have criminal histories, who would never pass a background check in Massachusetts, would be able to carry a loaded, concealed gun into our neighborhoods. We know this is a bad idea. Our police officers, our neighbors, and the responsible gun owners of Boston agree.

Oh. Dear. Lord.

No. That is not what national reciprocity does. In no way, shape, or form does national reciprocity permit people with criminal histories get permits that allow them to carry in places they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. The background check requirements tend to be universal for concealed carry permits, after all, and all those background checks are far more in-depth than a NICS check.

All this op-ed does is betray the Boston Globe’s pet mayor and police chief’s profound ignorance on the topic of concealed carry outside their remarkably sheltered bubble.

So, because of that ignorance, they peddle in scare tactics designed to pretend that their’s is the One True Way on concealed carry. They pretend that I, a Georgia resident, suddenly become a danger the moment I set foot in Boston. It takes profound ignorance, a profound sense of delusion, or profound dishonesty to believe that to be the case. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt on this one, just for fun.