Constitutional rights are seen as national in their application. For example, I can publish this article just as freely in California as I can in Texas, because the First Amendment protects free speech on a national level.
So why is it then, that same national protection doesn’t apply to the Second Amendment? What state you live in dramatically affects the scope of your rights as it relates to the Second Amendment. For example, California does not recognize the carry permits of any other state, and it did not even offer a legal way for residents of other states to carry firearms when visiting California until last year when SAF secured a preliminary injunction against the state.
In a case SAF and its partners filed against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the court ruled that the state must now allow nonresidents to apply for California carry permits for the first time in the state’s modern history. And in a rare instance of accepting reality, the California legislature passed a bill to essentially write our preliminary injunction terms into law.
New York agreed to do the same as part of a settlement, allowing residents from other states to apply for New York carry permits. Hawaii continues to refuse to allow non-residents any avenue to exercise the right to carry, but we expect that to change soon. Beyond those examples, some states like Oregon and Illinois only issue carry permits to nonresidents from certain states, but not all states. That, too, is likely to be defeated in the coming years.
While better than nothing, issuing carry permits to nonresidents is far from adequate. For example, a California carry permit requires hundreds of dollars in fees, a police interview, a 16-hour training course, fingerprinting and sometimes even a psychological exam. The process usually takes several months to complete. Thus, someone visiting the state for an impromptu trip still has their right to carry denied unless they started the process long before they traveled into the state.
A dramatic example of the dangerous legal situations that arise when concealed carry isn’t recognized uniformly from state to state happened back in 2022. Lloyd Muldrow, a Marine veteran and self-defense instructor, stopped an attack by an armed assailant in a Baltimore bar.
For his heroism, he would later receive the Carnegie Medal, which recognizes those who perform extraordinary acts of heroism in civilian life. But before that recognition, he suffered the humiliation of arrest and prosecution solely because he carried a firearm in Maryland while having only a permit issued by Virginia — one that Maryland refuses to honor.
As the Washington Times reported, “police thanked him — and then they arrested him.” Mr. Muldrow would eventually receive probation for his “crime.”
This is absolutely unacceptable. What’s needed, and what SAF continues to fight for – short of national constitutional carry – is reciprocity. The premise is simple: states must honor carry permits issued by other states. That’s why SAF recently filed an amicus brief in Gardner v. Maryland urging the Supreme Court to intervene on the issue of carry permit reciprocity. The brief looked at the historical tradition of laws prior to 1900 that exempted travelers from local concealed carry restrictions, arguing that this supports the constitutional case for reciprocity.
As we concluded in that brief, “[a] general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense cannot coexist with each state having the option to require visitors from other states to undergo a costly and time-consuming permit process to exercise that right.”
Having a permit issued by one state should be more than enough. The Second Amendment states clearly that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed and requiring a permission slip from the government in each state you visit would never have been tolerated by our Founders.
– Kostas Moros, SAF Director of Legal Research and Education
Kostas Moros is the Director of Legal Research and Education for the Second Amendment Foundation. He has been a practicing attorney in California since 2015, and is a member of several federal circuit courts, as well as the Supreme Court Bar. Aside from his litigation experience, Kostas has authored numerous amicus briefs filed in courts around the country, a law review article on why bans on common rifles are historically baseless, and dozens of articles on gun policy. He maintains a very active presence on X under the handle @MorosKostas.
