It was encouraging last week to see the U.S. House Judiciary Committee pass and send a gun reform bill to the full House for the first time in 23 years. That bill would require what 11 states and the District of Columbia already do: a federal background check on everyone who obtains a firearm from any source, whether it is purchased, gifted, or borrowed, with narrow exceptions. It will no doubt pass the House, since it has 231 co-sponsors, including five Republicans. But it has zero chance of clearing the Senate, given the Republican majority there.
In 1986, 15 states would not issue a concealed handgun permit to anyone except law enforcement, and 25 others only did so under strict rules that kept most people from obtaining one. Only a single state, Vermont, required no permit. As you can see by comparing this map with the one that leads this post, today 14 states require no permit and no state refuses to issue a permit to all comers.
On the discouraging side is the decade-long campaign pushing other states to pass a different kind of change in gun laws. Advocates of loosening gun restrictions call it “constitutional carry.” And while the particulars differ slightly from state to state in the 14 that have passed such laws, the essence everywhere is to allow anyone who can legally purchase a firearm to legally carry it, openly or concealed, virtually anywhere they wish. Some of these states already allow open carry without a permit.
South Dakota’s no-permit-needed law came into effect last month. And right now, legislatures in at least three more states—North Carolina, Oklahoma, Kentucky—are at various stages of seriously considering similar laws. Legislators in other states, including Alabama and Iowa, are also looking at possible moves in this direction, but their efforts are in the early stages, and past attempts there have failed.
The extremists pushing the change—led, of course, by the National Rifle Association—view the Second Amendment as absolute. In their view, there should be no restrictions on the carrying of firearms, except by felons and minors. This view goes farther than the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller that D.C. residents have the right to possess handguns at home for self-defense, and the 2010 extension of that decision to all the states and territories in McDonald v. City of Chicago. What the court did not rule on in those cases or since is whether states and localities can prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms in public spaces.
Starting in 1985, the NRA began a campaign to change state laws on the issuing of permits to carry concealed firearms. At the time, 16 states would not issue such permits at all, 25 could issue them but usually did so under very strict rules about who could obtain one (so-called “may issue” states), eight would issue them to nearly anyone who could legally own a firearm (“shall issue” states), and one, Vermont, required no permit at all and never had.
That map changed dramatically over the next quarter-century. By 2010, only two states still would not issue any concealed-carry permits. Nine were in the restrictive “may issue” category, 37 in the lax “shall issue” category, and two required no permits, Alaska having adopted the Vermont model. That same year, the NRA and its advocates cranked up the next phase of their campaign. Now the focus was on getting rid of permits altogether. If the three states now at various stages of considering this move wind up passing no-permit-needed laws, 17—a third of the states—will allow any citizen legally owning a handgun to carry it concealed without training or a permit.
Kentucky, which began issuing concealed carry permits in 1996, had issued 471,644 of them at the end of 2017. The permits require a $75 fee and an eight-hour training course taught by a certified instructor. But last week, on the first anniversary of the massacre of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stone Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the heavily Republican Kentucky Senate overwhelmingly passed a no-permit-required, no-training-required bill. Residents there can already carry firearms openly with no permit or training. The bill seems certain to pass the House.
“This is how our state decided to mark that anniversary of the deadliest high school shooting in our nation’s history — pass more gun legislation, making it easier for people to carry weapons in our state,” said Connie Coartney, volunteer leader with the Kentucky chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
In North Carolina, competing gun bills have been introduced in the legislature. House Bill 61 would get rid of the current requirement for permits and also allow legislators, legislative employees, and former law enforcement officers to carry concealed handguns in legislative buildings and on the grounds of the state capitol. Similar bills passed the North Carolina House in 2015 and 2017 but couldn’t get out of committee in the Senate. On the other side is a package of bills that would “include provisions requiring permits for purchase of long guns and what are defined as assault weapons, banning accessories called bump stocks that allow the rapid fire of semi-automatic weapons, requiring gun owners to have liability insurance, and allowing law enforcement agencies to destroy seized guns.”
The Oklahoma House of Representatives passed a no-permit-required bill last week:
"Explain to me how it is a good idea that law enforcement officer[s] who have been trained get caught up in cross fire on their own and putting guns in hands of individuals who haven’t been trained is a good idea? Please explain that to me," questioned Rep. Collin Walke, D-Oklahoma City, referring to the recent death of a New York City officer as a result of 'friendly fire'.
In response, [Republican] Rep. [Kevin] West stated "I fall back to what the Constitution says. The Constitution does not say training is required but beyond that when people do get firearms, most people are responsible and they want to be responsible so they seek out this training."
Iowa and Alabama are also considering versions of a no-permit-required bill.
Why more law enforcement agencies aren’t screaming from the rooftops about these no-permit-required laws is a mystery.
You can view a gif here of the map above showing how the laws have changed over the past three decades.
