The GOP in Congress are combining a gun control bill that has some bipartisan support — beefing up the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), that’s used to run background checks on gun purchases (in most, but not all, instances), while adding reciprocity between states for Concealed Carry permits (just as marriage licenses and drivers licenses are reciprocated).
The latter part, the concealed carry reciprocity looks to be crafted primarily to allow people going from one state to another not be worried that they are going to be arrested if they are passing through a state that doesn’t reciprocate on the conditions of such permits. The classic case given is of a woman with permit to concealed carry in Pennsylvania who was pulled over for a traffic stop in New Jersey, told the police she was carrying, and was arrested for not having a concealed carry permit that was recognized by New Jersey and served almost two months before being pardoned by the governor.
Under the law, states could still regulate how and where a person could concealed-carry a weapon, but couldn’t disallow permits issued from another state. That sounds moderately reasonable, except that the criteria for getting such permits vary widely — some states require special training classes and additional background checks, while others seem to hand them out like raffle tickets. And while we have the analogues for marriage licenses and drivers licenses, the purpose of firearms is quite a bit different than the purpose for marriages or driving. And I would not be at all surprised if some of the Republicans supporting the bill felt that marriage license reciprocity was not a good thing back when some states were issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples and others were not.
The other thing the bill does is allow concealed carry, regardless of state law, on federal property — in the National Park System, National Wildlife Refuge System, and on lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and Bureau of Reclamation.
Still, given the opportunity to further strengthen the NICS (by incenting timely entry of data into the system by state and federal agencies, which might have averted the recent Texas church shooting) isn’t any small potatoes, and even if the NRA is gung-ho for the reciprocity thing (which makes me knee jerk against it), it might be a better compromise than it looks.
And, at the very least, it’s interesting that the GOP thinks that the reciprocity bill needs to have some element of compromise in order to get passed.
House to Vote on Concealed-Carry Gun Bill – The Atlantic
GOP leaders want to pass a bill that would treat concealed-carry permits like driver’s or marriage licenses. But to do so, they’re tacking on a bipartisan bill to tighten up the federal background-check system.
Setting aside the guns aspect for the moment, I think a more uniform code of laws is beneficial. The idea of traveling within one's own country and falling under continually varying rules is, at best, an inconvenience; at worst, it's an exploitabile threat.