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<![CDATA[Constitutional Carry]]>

Anti-gun activists blame constitutional carry for Nashville school shooting

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Gun control activists have a new villain to point to in the wake of the shootings at Nashville’s Covenant School on Monday; constitutional carry. Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts is one of several anti-gun activists who’ve been pointing the finger at Tennessee’s permitless carry law, insinuating that without the law the shooting never would have happened.

“Tennessee @GovBillLee hasn’t had time yet to tweet his thoughts and prayers for Covenant School, but when he does, remind him that this is exactly why police and citizens opposed the permitless carry bill he signed into law at a gun maker’s factory in 2021,” Ms Watts tweeted.

Mr Lee signed legislation in 2021 that allowed for citizens to carry a loaded handgun either concealed or openly without a permit, but not rifles or shotguns. The suspect in the Nashville school shooting, identified as a 28-year-old woman, was carrying two assault-style rifles and a handgun, according to police.

Ms Watts criticised lax gun rules.

“SCHOOL SHOOTINGS ARE NOT ACTS OF NATURE,” she tweeted. “They are senseless, preventable acts of man enabled by weak gun laws and lawmakers. This doesn’t have to be our new normal. Our children don’t have to be sacrificed in exchange for gun industry profits. We can stop this.”

MSNBC’s Haynes Brown chimed in with similar arguments, pointing again to permitless carry along with several other pro-2A bills under consideration in the Tennessee legislature this year.

The state already has few restrictions in place as it is: no waiting period between between purchasing and receiving a firearm; no license or permit required to own a gun; no need to register a gun with the state; no need for a permit to carry a handgun, open or concealed, if you’re over the age of 21.

And yet Tennessee Republicans are still trying to remove the barriers that remain. As part of a settlement in a lawsuit from the Firearms Policy Coalition, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti cut a deal in January that made it legal for 18-year-olds to openly carry firearms. Last week, the state Senate passed a bill to codify that agreement into law. State Rep. Chris Todd, who supports the Senate bill, has called it a “civil right,” ignoring arguments that expanding access to guns for teenagers could lead to more killings.

That matches with the rhetoric around “constitutional carry,” the gun lobby’s lofty way of saying that no permit should be needed to carry a concealed firearm. The doctrine is the basis of another bill that Todd is backing that would allow open-carry of any firearm, including high-powered rifles. Even testimony against the bill from the Tennessee Highway Patrol and the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security hasn’t dimmed support from Republicans.

The cowardly killer who targeted elementary school kids at the Covenant School had a manifesto, maps, and had committed a lot of time and planning to commit mass murder. Do gun control activists like Watts really believe that if Tennessee wasn’t a permitless carry state they would have called the whole thing off? I highly doubt it. In fact, it sounds like the killer actually scouted out a second location for another attack, but decided against it because there was too much security. They were looking for as soft a target as possible to carry out their monstrous plot.

No, this is yet another example of Watts playing politics with an unspeakable tragedy. Florida is set to approve its own permitless carry law this week, and anti-gun activists are already starting to create a narrative that they can deploy as a last ditch effort to derail the bill, or at the very least deploy when Gov. Ron DeSantis signs the bill into law. Permitless carry had nothing to do with Monday’s school shooting, but anti-gun activists need the public to be terrified over the prospect of Florida becoming the 26th permitless carry state, so that’s what they’re running with.

We’ll be talking more about this false narrative on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co with BA contributor Ryan Petty, who has become a staunch advocate for school safety after his daughter Alaina was murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. Ryan agrees with Watts on one point: these attacks are preventable, but not through more gun control laws. We’ll be talking about the substantive steps that schools can take to harden up security, as well as the importance (and ability) to recognize and respond to these threats before they are carried out.

Permitless carry passes Florida House, Nebraska Senate could vote on similar measure Monday

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Next week could be a very big week for gun owners and Second Amendment advocates. There’s a very good chance we’ll see one more more favorable rulings coming out of U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez’s southern California courtroom, while Colorado and Michigan lawmakers could send gun control bills to Democratic governors for their signature.

The biggest news of all is likely to come from Florida and Nebraska, which are poised to give final approval for permitless carry bills early next week. On Friday afternoon, the Florida House of Representatives signed off on HB 543 by a vote of 76-32, with several lawmakers absent. The Florida Senate has its own permitless carry bill on the floor, and lawmakers are expected to start moving it towards a final vote as early as Monday.

On Tuesday Nebraska lawmakers are set for another round of debate and votes on LB 77. The permitless carry legislation passed its first reading in early March, but had been absent from the legislative calendar ever since. As of Friday afternoon, however, LB 77 was on the legislative agenda when lawmakers return from their four-day weekend break.

I’d say that Florida’s in a better position to become the 26th permitless carry state at this point, primarily because the GOP’s majorities in Tallahassee are so large Democrats can’t put up a lengthy fight. In Nebraska the Democratic minority has been filibustering virtually every bill introduced in the unicameral legislature, led by Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh. Legislative progress has almost ground to a halt as Cavanaugh and others have delayed votes by offering up numerous amendments and subjecting as many provisions as possible to as long a debate as the rules allow. As the Daily Mail reported a couple of weeks ago:

Clerk of the Legislature Brandon Metzler said a delay like this has happened only a couple of times in the past 10 years.

‘But what is really uncommon is the lack of bills that have advanced,’ Metzler said. ‘Usually, we’re a lot further along the line than we’re seeing now.’

Only 26 bills have advanced from the first of three rounds of debate required to pass a bill in Nebraska. There would normally be two to three times that number by mid-March, Metzler said.

‘I have nothing, nothing but time,’ she declared at one point. ‘And I am going to use all of it.

‘If people think that they are going to wear me down, if yesterday didn’t show you that you cannot wear me down – you cannot wear me down.

‘I literally left the floor yesterday, went up to my office, and laid down on the floor.

‘I laid down on the floor, a hard floor, and took a 20 minute nap before going to committee hearings. You cannot stop me. I will not be stopped.’

Cavanaugh’s stated reason for the filibuster is SB 574, a bill that, as amended, would ban sex-reassignment surgery from being performed in the state on anyone under the age of 19. After weeks of filibustering, the legislation finally received its first vote on Thursday, but Democrats are likely going to keep the slowdown in place throughout the remainder of the session.

That doesn’t mean that constitutional carry is done for this year. Far from it, as a matter of fact. If LB 77 clears second reading next Tuesday, as expected, only one more vote will need to happen before the bill goes to Gov. Jim Pillen for his signature. Ron DeSantis is probably going to get to put pen to paper first, but I think Pillen is still going to get the opportunity to enshrine constitutional carry into law before this year’s session is over.

Tennessee making right move for 18- to 21-year-olds

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In some parts of the nation, legal adults under the age of 21 are treated like second-class citizens. Sure, they can be drafted into the military, at least in theory, as well as vote, sign contracts, live on their own, and so on, but they can’t buy a firearm.

Tennessee isn’t one of those places. There’s not a lot of chance of the Volunteer State passing such a law anytime soon.

In fact, there’s a lawsuit that would kind of go in the opposite direction.

Two years after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee led the charge to allow residents 21 and older to carry handguns in public without a permit, younger adults could soon have the same privilege, with or without the governor’s signoff.

A gun rights group sued after the law was passed in 2021, arguing that the age limit should be lower. Then late last year, the state’s top lawyer moved to negotiate a settlement rather than defend the law, citing last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding gun rights. In January, Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti proposed a deal that would allow 18- to 20-year-olds to carry handguns publicly.

A judge put the arrangement on hold for a 30-day period that ends Friday. What will happen then is unclear. Conflicting opinions on the settlement within the state are a reflection of a broader U.S. political divide over who should be allowed to have guns — a debate that rages on against a backdrop of continual headlines about deadly mass shootings.

“It strikes me as a little bit unusual (for Tennessee) to settle at this point, rather than wait for a decision” on the lawsuit, said Andrew Willinger, executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law at Duke University’s law school.

Except for the fact that Tennessee officials likely know precisely what’s about to happen.

The Bruen decision laid down very specific rules for what could be considered constitutional and what couldn’t be, and a restriction on gun ownership for lawful adults due to age wasn’t likely to survive. Officials there may have known that and are hoping to negotiate a settlement so that a ruling doesn’t take things even further.

Plus, frankly, I suspect officials in Tennessee weren’t that keen on restricting lawful adults in the first place.

That actually does matter, because it could feasibly impact how vigorous of a defense the law would have gotten in the first place. If you don’t agree with it, it’s not hard to look to settle pretty quickly, especially when there’s ample evidence that it’s not going to survive anyway.

At the end of the day, Tennessee is making some positive moves on gun ownership. If we’re going to say people age 18 to 21 are adults and hold them accountable for their actions as adults, they should also get the benefits of adulthood as well. That includes the full slate of their constitutionally protected rights.

If we’re not going to do that because they’re somehow not developed enough to be trusted with those, then they’re still children and should be treated as such before the law.

Since no one is interested in heading in that direction, Tennessee’s decision to settle is the right call here.

Montana state legislator proposes interesting amendment

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Most of what many of us know about Montana comes from watching Yellowstone, it seems. I can’t speak about how accurate the show is, but the few folks I know from there love it, so they must be getting something right.

So, I suppose it’s not much of a shock that the semi-libertarian sensibilities we see in the show are pretty true to life.

How true to life? Well, the state passed constitutional carry recently. Now, a lawmaker wants to make it part of the state constitution.

If Democrats regain political power in Montana in the future, it’d be good to have gun rights soundly secured in the Montana Constitution.

That’s the argument Rep. Braxton Mitchell, R-Columbia Falls, made Wednesday with a supermajority of Republicans in control of the Montana Legislature.

In the House Judiciary Committee, Mitchell argued in favor of a bill that would ask voters to amend the state constitution to protect the rights of gun owners to carry a concealed weapon without a permit — as the legislature did last session in statute.

Currently, Article II Section 12 of the state constitution protects the right to bear arms, but not under all circumstances:

“The right of any person to keep or bear arms in defense of his own home, person, and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question, but nothing herein contained shall be held to permit the carrying of concealed weapons.”

House Bill 551 would strike out the last portion of the provision, the exception against concealed weapons.

The bill has about 50 cosponsors, which is good, but because it’s a constitutional amendment, it requires a two-thirds majority.

Yet it might just happen, which will be interesting, to say the least.

It’s not particularly easy to amend the Montana state constitution, which is kind of the point. Should Democrats regain power in the state, constitutional carry is bound to be a target for them. Making it part of the state constitution will make it much harder to repeal.

At least in theory.

See, the bill basically just strikes out a bit of a sentence that precludes the constitution from being interpreted to allow the carrying of a firearm without a permit. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll be interpreted as such with that part omitted.

That would be something for the courts to decide and I fear that if the wrong court gets hold of it, the ruling will basically make it so not much is impacted.

But I’m not a lawyer, so I could be way off base with that.

Still, the idea of constitutional carry being preserved via constitutional amendment tickles me in ways that border on unseemly. Especially if it’s interpreted to expressly protect constitutional carry.

If so, Montana might well lead the way going forward on the new frontier of pro-gun legislation. It would be amazing to see constitutional carry states do the same and watch the anti-gun crowd crumple in tears because they can’t do anything about it.

What a glorious state of affairs that would be.

Gun rights groups in Florida still pushing for open carry

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Florida is a fairly pro-gun state, notwithstanding the whole fiasco that occurred in the wake of Parkland. Yet they’ve never been as pro-gun as their reputation suggested.

For one thing, they prohibit open carry for anything while hunting or fishing.

This is kind of stupid. It’s especially stupid since the state is on the brink of passing constitutional carry.

Activists in the state, though, are pushing hard for open carry to be included in the new law.

With GOP supermajorities in the Legislature, House Speaker Paul Renner and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo can easily pass bills that top their agenda, but a gun rights bill has put Republican lawmakers feeling the heat and on the defensive these days.

That’s because legislation this session about a permitless/‘constitutional” carry bill — requiring no permit or training class — isn’t enough for the gun advocates who have been streaming into the state capital.

There’s clearly been a breakdown in what true “constitutional carry” means for gun rights advocates. And they want that bill to include a provision for Floridians to be able to openly carry firearms in public (current Florida law allows one to openly carry a weapon to and from hunting, fishing, camping and the gun range). It’s called “open carry.”

And things are getting a bit dicey.

At a Senate committee meeting last week, Matt Collins, a gun rights supporter, said that it was “embarrassing” for Gov. Ron DeSantis if he couldn’t get open carry passed this year.  It would be “political impotence on the part of Gov. DeSantis, Collins said. “It’s failed leadership and it’s weak,” he added.

Look, I think it’s stupid that Florida doesn’t have open carry.

I’m not a fan of it myself, but I don’t think it should be restricted in any way, shape, or form. It’s idiotic that Florida so completely restricts open carry. That simply shouldn’t be the case, and we’ve got data from most of the rest of the nation showing that it’s not nearly the problem many believe.

However, I have a concern, and it’s one I hope Floridians are prepared to consider.

This bill isn’t a done deal. It’s not a slam dunk by any stretch.

Constitutional carry, even without an open carry provision, is a step forward for the state. Is open carry so important that it’s worth scuttling extremely pro-gun legislation over?

That’s what’s on the table, after all. Passing a permitless carry law is certainly the goal, but it’s not an automatic, which means being too demanding could well kill the measure entirely.

I mean, if you can get both, by all means. I’m not saying no one should try. Get everything you can, because you know the other side sure as hell will.

I’m just saying that you have to decide whether it’s worth pushing too hard.

Open carry is grand, but if you’re not willing to keep the status quo until you can get it, you have to be careful how hard you push, and some aren’t being that careful.