National reciprocity legislation is now something we know the Trump administration is working on. While it's not the ideal situation--national constitutional carry would be so much better--it's far better than the status quo. As it stands, a permit in one state might be recognized in another, or it might not. You have to navigate the insane patchwork of laws, all to exercise a constitutionally protected right.
But if you have a driver's license in Minnesota, you can drive anywhere in the United States. Your license is accepted everywhere, even though driving is considered a privilege and the right to keep and bear arms is a right.
Yeah, someone try to make that make sense.
Writing at Real Clear Politics, John Lott makes the case for national reciprocity.
Much of the gun-control debate centers on hypothetical risks. With reciprocity, however, we don’t have to speculate. With 21.5 million concealed handgun permit holders in the United States, we already know how they behave. In addition, most Americans already benefit from reciprocity. The average state recognizes permits from 30 other states, allowing permit holders to travel legally with their firearms.
Last year, when House Judiciary Committee passed national reciprocity along party lines, Democrats also opposed legislation that would allow current and retired law enforcement officers with at least ten years of service to carry firearms in facilities open to the public – including schools – while traveling across the country. Given their fear that allowing experienced current or retired law enforcement officers to carry would endanger public safety, it comes as no surprise that they also oppose allowing civilians to carry across state lines.
Congressional opponents of reciprocity warned that permit holders would commit crimes but cited no evidence to support that claim. The facts point in the opposite direction. Concealed handgun permit holders are extraordinarily law-abiding. States revoke their permits for firearm-related violations at rates measured in thousandths – or even ten-thousandths – of one percent. Police officers rarely commit firearm crimes, yet permit holders lose their permits for firearm offenses at only about one-twelfth the rate that police are convicted of firearm related crimes.
This is the typical anti-gun playbook. They treat unlawful gun carriers and permit holders as the exact same, even while pretending they understand the difference.
In their mind, the paranoia they accuse us of takes hold and rather than differentiate between good guys and bad guys, they see us all as bad guys in waiting.. They claim to be able to tell the difference, but this is a case of "deeds not words" applying. Their deeds tell a different story.
Permit holders are the most law-abiding people in the country. That's been shown by years of data, also. It's not some flash in the pan, but a trend that dates back a ways, likely to the day the first carry permit was issued.
People who care about getting permits or constitutional carry laws aren't the criminals. The bad guys have carried without permits for decades, and would continue to do so no matter what laws are in place. They don't care about state lines, either.
“This legislation is a dramatic infringement on states’ rights,” claimed Emma Brown, executive director of the gun-control group Giffords, echoing a common criticism. Yet those same organizations routinely advocate federal gun-control laws that override state policy choices.
What we need to understand about people like Brown here is that states' rights only matter when it comes to gun restrictions. As Lott correctly notes, they routinely advocate for federal gun control, which is also a "dramatic infringement on states' rights."
It's like their calls for local control while opposing Second Amendment sanctuary communities. They don't want local control; they simply want things to be as difficult for gun owners as humanly possible. That includes the whole mess of reciprocity as it stands, versus national reciprocity.
Opponents also claimed that national reciprocity would confuse travelers about which gun laws apply in each state and lead to more arrests. But reciprocity already exists across much of the country, and no evidence shows that out-of-state permit holders create such problems. Indeed, the same situation exists for drivers when they cross state lines: They are required to follow the driving regulations for the state they are in.
They're required to follow all the laws of the state they're in, and it's not an issue.
But if it were, would it somehow be better if permit holders were somehow legally barred from carrying in particular states because of some quirk of how reciprocity works? I mean, if permit holders can't be trusted to look at the laws of where they're going, how would they know if their permits will be recognized in a different state under the current rules?
In fact, the lack of any significant issues is, alone, proof that their fears and outrage are nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to the concept of them losing ground. As Lott noted previously, all of their arguments are based on hypotheticals rather than anything concrete because nothing concrete supports the arguments. They have to use hypotheticals because it's all they have.
There's no threat to anyone with national reciprocity...except to anti-gunners who fear yet another example of our gun rights making us safer.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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