Constitutional Carry Law Promoted by Donald Trump Would Allow People to Carry Guns Everywhere Without Permits
On January 21, the website for the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention went dark. Established by President Biden in 2023 as part of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the office represented the first federal effort to protect Americans from gun-related death and injury in the past 30 years. It made an impact: reducing the loopholes by which firearms can be distributed without background checks; providing support for communities and victims of gun violence; and educating the public on gun violence-prevention measures, like safe storage and emergency risk-protection orders. In 2024, firearm-related deaths and injuries dropped for the third year in a row.
Despite these accomplishments, gun violence recently surpassed auto accidents as the number one killer of American children, reminding us that we still have a long way to go. But as soon as President Trump took office this year, he effectively eliminated the Office of Gun Violence Prevention by an executive order entitled 'Protecting Second Amendment Rights,' exalting "a right to keep and bear arms' as the most important right held by Americans. Among his priorities is 'national reciprocity,' a policy that would require every state to respect the concealed carry eligibility standards of others, effectively allowing a person authorized to carry a concealed firearm in one state to carry legally in any other state.
Supporters of national reciprocity say that it will ensure consistency among state-based regulations. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), one of the bill's cosponsors, has said it 'ensures that law-abiding citizens can exercise their constitutional right to carry concealed firearms across state lines while respecting the laws of each state.'
Currently, there is significant state-to-state variation governing whether and how a person may carry a firearm into public space. For example, some states, like Massachusetts and New Jersey, require people to complete a background check and a safety-training course before being authorized to carry a concealed gun in public. On the other end of the regulatory spectrum are 29 states that have done away with any licensing or training requirements by implementing what is popularly known as 'Constitutional,' or permitless, carry.
The regulatory differences among states correspond to vast differences in rates of firearm homicide, suicide, and injury. Perhaps not surprisingly, states with regulations and safety-training requirements experience significantly lower rates of firearm violence. Massachusetts and New Jersey have among the lowest rates of firearm-related death, with 3.7 and 4.6 gun deaths per 100,000 residents, respectively. But Mississippi, which implemented permitless open carry in 2013 and permitless concealed carry in 2016, experiences 29.4 gun deaths per 100,000 residents, according to CDC data published by the Pew Research Center.
Researchers studying the impact of permitless carry have demonstrated that the removal of gun regulations has an immediate, devastating effect on public safety. Permitless carry states, like West Virginia and Missouri, experienced a steep increase in firearm deaths after eliminating their licensing and training requirements. West Virginia passed permitless carry in 2016, after which gun homicides increased 48% and suicides increased 22% by 2020. After Missouri repealed its firearm permit regulations in 2007, firearm homicides increased by 23% over the next four years. Missouri — which used to boast relatively low rates of gun violence — currently ranks among the top 10 states for firearm suicide and has the eighth highest rate of firearm violence in the nation.
In spite of the overwhelming data showing the deadly consequences of permitless carry, there is a bill making its way through the North Carolina legislature that, if adopted, would make NC the 30th state to eliminate gun permit regulations. The state's existing laws are relatively permissive, allowing people over age 21 to apply for a permit to carry a concealed firearm after passing a gun-safety course. Currently, North Carolina's gun-suicide rate is lower than the national average, but its gun-homicide rate is higher.
In an interview with local media, Rebecca Ceartas, executive director of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, warned that the new law will cost lives as 'people as young as 18 years old, with no training and no background check, could carry a hidden loaded weapon in public.'
Regardless of the outcome in North Carolina, national reciprocity would require that every state honor the reckless standards of permitless carry. Trump has urged Congress to send such a bill to his desk, telling the audience at a 2024 campaign rally with the National Rifle Association that doing so would help Americans protect themselves against 'barbaric' criminals and keep their families safe.
Beyond ignoring the data that show how gun regulations save lives, national reciprocity also amounts to a breathtaking breach of 'states' rights,' since it would force states with evidence-based regulations designed to preserve life to adopt the looser (or nonexistent) regulations of permitless carry states. This federal overreach is in stark contradiction to Republicans' stated insistence on 'states' rights' for reproductive rights and voter protections.
Since about the mid 1970s, though, the Republican party has increasingly fallen in line with an extremist 'gun rights' lobby that interprets any firearm regulation as a betrayal of the Second Amendment. The well-funded gun rights machine has launched a relentless disinformation campaign to convince Americans that civilian-owned guns are the best way to fight crime and that, in the now canonical words of former NRA frontman Wayne LaPierre, 'the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.'
But the overwhelming accumulation of empirical evidence shows otherwise. Public health experts and criminologists have shown that deregulating guns leads to more crime, more death, and more injury. National reciprocity means more firearms in public circulation — and in the hands of people who have not been vetted or trained. Instead of a common-sense way to normalize gun regulation across the states, national reciprocity is a race to the bottom, forcing all of us into a deadly 'guns everywhere' dystopia.
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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