Constitutional carry is the law in more than half of the states. That's fantastic news, but it's not the law of the land. I wish it were, but alas, we're a long way from that ever being the case. Still, we've made a lot of ground over the years, and I'm proud of where the gun rights movement has gotten us on the national level.
There are state laws that need to be addressed, but they're coming down one by one, so that's good news, too.
Because constitutional carry is so common now, it seems the folks at the Rockefeller Institute seem to believe that some laws are needed to...offset constitutional carry.
The Rockefeller Institute of Government published a column on the rise of constitutional carry and suggested a number of gun controls to offset the permitless concealed carry scenario.
The first gun control discussed by the institute “[restricts] where guns may be carried.” They noted that “many states” already make “bars, stadiums, and other public venues off-limits to concealed weapons.” The institute did not note that similar restrictions are the subject of litigation and, in the case of Hawaii–Wolford v. Lopez (2026)–have already been struck down by the Supreme Court.
The next gun control suggested by the institute would set policies for gun storage in vehicles.
The third "suggestion" is that a database be maintained of all legal gun owners. The authors claim that this way, authorities can access whether or not someone carrying is, in fact, authorized to carry a firearm. A database of convicted felons and other prohibited people, of course, would do the same thing, but then they couldn't sell gun owner registration as something meant to make life a bit easier in constitutional carry jurisdictions.
Riiiiiiiiiight.
Of course, this comes from an institute named after a man whose father and brother were big fans of population control and eugenics. You'll excuse me if I'm less than impressed.
That said, while the author of the original piece argues that constitutional carry increases violent crime outcomes, I find his claim of there being a causal link spurious at best.
In fact, with constitutional carry the norm in more than half the states, plus "shall issue" permitting the law of the land, we hit a record low in homicides. If more guns equal more crime, as the Rockefeller Institute's author seems to claim, then we should have seen something close to the exact opposite.
Since we didn't, I fail to see the need to institute such draconian measures.
As it stands, though, states already restrict where guns can be lawfully carried. Criminals, however, routinely carry in those places and recklessly use those guns to settle petty grudges regardless of the signs on the door. What no one at the Rockefeller Institute seems inclined to do is to explain why my family and I should be vulnerable in more places, simply because they're convinced of something that evidence doesn't really support.
Dictating storage in vehicles is becoming a bit more common, but it's problematic because now you're telling people to buy and install devices into cars that, frankly, are temporary property, and are blaming them for guns getting stolen when that seems to happen more often outside of the gun-free zones being demanded here.
As for a database, all I have to say is that, in the spirit of Sesame Street, my response is brought to you by the letters "F" and "U."
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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