Why Reciprocity Will Undermine State Autonomy

Submitted by Sam Bocetta

In March of 2017, Texas Senator John Cornyn introduced the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, his variation on the kind of interstate carry legislation first proposed by North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson.

The bill aims to solve the supposed problem of concealed carry permit holders having to navigate a labyrinth of perplexing laws and recognition statutes when traveling outside of their respective states. In other words, anyone with a gun license that’s legal in their state will be able to carry it on them in any other state, regardless of that state’s policies on firearms.

Republicans in the House have used cases of individuals who have been arrested while traveling to justify the bill. The most well-known example of such an arrest is Shaneen Allen, a phlebotomist who spent 48 days in a New Jersey jail after she openly disclosed to a police officer that she was carrying a handgun on a Pennsylvania concealed carry permit.

The Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act would seem to eliminate any future incidents of law-abiding gun owners being unjustly apprehended…if one takes the narrow view that gun legislation or, indeed, any legislation can really be that simple.

The innate problem that such a bill poses is one of totalitarianism. Cajoling states with restrictive gun laws into allowing armed outsiders to enter their municipalities violates those states’ rights to autonomy and personal policies. That hardly sounds as constitutional as the name of the bill would suggest.

Reciprocity legislation ignores one glaring fact—that each state is different and has its own unique identity. This applies to gun laws as much as anything else. For instance, in some states, gun finance enables a person with a concealed carry permit to place a gun on layaway.

In the state of Florida, a concealed carry license certifies you to carry additional weapons, such as billy clubs and tear gas guns. At the other end of the spectrum, we have states like California where the sale and possession of firearms and ammo have been heavily regulated.

Pursuant to California Penal Code section 25610, a U.S. citizen of legal age who possesses a gun license can keep a handgun in a motor vehicle if visiting the state on a temporary basis, so long as the gun is unloaded and secured in a locked container.

But when it comes to assault rifles, they’re not nearly as lax. AR-15 furniture and accessories are verboten on the West Coast. Detachable magazines, in particular, are not legal in the state. As of 2017, the controversial bullet button, a device that was designed to circumvent the state’s law about fixed magazines, has also been banned.

This is where reciprocity legislation really becomes a dangerous prospect. It comes at an unfortunate time in modern history, one in which we’ve seen numerous national tragedies play out involving assault weapons.

Nobody can forget the October, 2017, massacre at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Thanks to modifications to an AR-15, lone gunman Stephen Paddock was able to injure a staggering 546 people and kill nearly 60 others by turning his semi-automatic rifle into a fully-automatic rifle.

Las Vegas, Nevada, is just a four-hour drive from the greater Los Angeles area. Under the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, madmen like Paddock would be able to enter the state with the same assault weapon he used to mow down 59 innocent people.

Not only does this have the potential to lead to more gun-related deaths but it also eschews the issue that should already be a part of our cultural dialogue—the failure of our national agencies to do their job properly.

Case in point: Devin Kelley. After Kelley gunned down his fellow Texans in a Sutherland Springs church, we learned that he had been convicted of a violent crime in the past, a detail that should have been flagged on the National Criminal Information Center database, but was missed because it was not using the latest web hosting standards.

At the time, many Democrats called for stricter background checks and more restrictive gun laws. What everyone on both sides of the aisle neglected to mention was the aforementioned incompetence.

Everyone, it would seem, except House Speaker Paul Ryan who said, “How about enforcing the laws we’ve got on the books. This man should not have gotten a gun, you know why? Because he’s a domestic abuser. We have laws on the books that say if you’re a domestic abuser, you’re not supposed to own a gun.”

Ryan’s remarks at the time reflected the need to follow existing rules instead of creating new ones. Reciprocity legislation would run counter to that notion.

Of course, this isn’t a matter of gun control nor is it a partisan matter. The larger issue here is constitutionality and sovereignty. In America, all 50 states have plenary power to enact laws independent of federal statutes.

If the Senate passes this hotly debated bill, what Americans will be looking at is a case of gross federal overreach, one that tramples on the full right and power that each state’s governing body should have over itself. It would crumple up the social contract that has been in place since the 1800s.

If the federal government violates sovereign freedoms and they’re allowed to get away with it, it won’t stop there. That is how oligarchies are born.

Luckily for the states, there is one right that the federal government cannot take away from them and that is the right to nullification. Every state government should invalidate a federal law that is found to be unconstitutional.

Mentioned in this article: