Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Over the last several years, states have enacted laws that allow law-abiding residents to carry concealed firearms without a permit. Second Amendment advocates support what has come to be known as “constitutional carry,” in which individuals don’t require the government’s permission to buy or carry a handgun concealed.
Gun-rights advocates also support national reciprocity for concealed carry. They believe that individuals with a state-issued carry permit should be allowed to carry concealed in all 50 states — which probably won’t ever happen. But there is a compromise: reciprocity with all states that allow concealed carry.
Republican lawmakers last week introduced a bill called the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which would require states that allow concealed carry to recognize conceal carry permits from other states. Under the new law, gun owners with a state-issued concealed carry permit would not have to apply for a new permit in a different state.
“Law-abiding gun owners should not be penalized for exercising their Second Amendment right,” said Congressman Tony Gonzales of Texas, one of the bill’s co-sponsers. “The Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act is common-sense legislation that will allow Americans with state-issued concealed carry licenses or permits to conceal a handgun between states.”
Congressman Richard Hudson, another co-sponsor, said our Second Amendment right “does not disappear when we cross invisible state lines, and this commonsense legislation guarantees that.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and declared the right an individual one.
In a seminal case, D.C. v. Heller (2008), the court struck down the District of Columbia’s a 30-year-old law banning the ownership of handguns. The court affirmed that the Second Amendment right is an individual one. Litigation continued after the district tried to prevent residents from carrying their guns for personal protection outside the home. A federal court struck down D.C.’s “good reason” requirement to obtain a concealed carry permit.
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen (2022), the court ruled that New York’s requirement that gun owners show “proper cause” to carry their weapons was unconstitutional. Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion, contended that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is not “a second-class right.” Gun owners must be allowed to carry their guns in public for personal protection.
Photo credit: By Joshuashearn – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
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