What could possibly go wrong?

I was talking with a pro-gun lobbyist recently and he suggested a possible solution to a weakness the bigots are trying to exploit:

Under the proposed legislation, to carry concealed weapons people need only meet the minimum requirements of federal law to possess a gun, be permitted in their home state to carry a concealed weapon, and abide by a state’s concealed carry location restrictions. For example, Alaska allows adult residents to carry a concealed weapon without a license, background check, or training as long as they are allowed to possess a gun under weak Alaska gun laws – even if they have committed repeated violent misdemeanors or have committed misdemeanor sex offenses against minors.  This legislation would force the other 47 states that allow concealed carrying to allow many Alaskan violent misdemeanants to carry concealed guns in their state, even if a state completely bans gun possession by such persons.

This same sort of thing is why Nevada stopped recognizing Utah carry permits.

His proposed solution would be for states to create a two tier concealed carry license system. Tier 1 would be whatever the State thought was appropriate for their need. If that was a lifetime permit, no training requirement, and you had a detectable pulse, then fine. Tier 2 would have a set of requirements which was the union of the most stringent requirements of all the other states. Hence if Nevada required four hours of training, and Texas required eight hours (pulling numbers out of the air) then the training requirement for a tier 2 CWP from State X would be eight hours. Similar things for other requirements on license duration, age restrictions, etc.

This could be a win for both people that want to carry and the state that issues the tier 2 permit. You would have to get just one permit to carry in all the states that recognize out of state permits. And the state would be in a position to have a decent revenue stream because they were “selling a valuable product”.

Is there a downside to this scheme? Sure, the 2nd Amendment should be my carry permit. But we aren’t there yet. But this would be one step closer to being able to carry nationwide with far less effort. When you can and do carry in all states we can then more easily demonstrate the bigots are just blowing smoke and we can work on reducing the most onerous restrictions in the unfriendly states and making “tier 1” in the friendly states be “Vermont Carry”.

Is there some unintended consequence that might come out of this and come back to bite us?

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10 thoughts on “What could possibly go wrong?

  1. Assuming we are gearing this towards nationwide, mandatory reciprocity, the “Tier 2” setting is easy to scuttle – Kalifornistan just needs to require some God-awful amount of training at some exorbitant cost that can only be procured from certain traininghouses. Granted, their “shall issue” status would be easily bypassed from anyone carrying from out-of-state, but all one state needs to do is change their internal requirements, and everyone looking to attain a Tier 2 certification suffers.

    Of course, ironically, the same 10th-Amendment-reinforcement campaigns that so many gunnies (such as myself) are supporting right now could (and possibly should) be used to scuttle any form of mandatory nation-wide reciprocity agreement for concealed carry permits.

  2. I think you aught to re-read that notice. The NSCA is picking nits again and there is a lot of politics involved in this. There is nothing in the law mandating another state have a 24 hr database the NSCA just pulled it out of their ass and what the hell difference is there between 5 and 7 years in determining criminal behavior of a licensee! Utah & Florida still requires a full background check. Legislative session before last mandated Nevada issue “out of state “licenses. The hook is that the class for them must be taught by local instructors and in Nevada. No out of state classes allowed. A segment of the ccw community has been trying to shut out Utah ever since because they think its costing them $$$. Truth is all it does is alienate a lot of really good casino customers. I don’t expect it too last as what the casinos want they generally get and the desperately want customers.

  3. Is there some unintended consequence that might come out of this and come back to bite us?

    I can’t think of one, but if we hand the idea over to Congress I’m sure they’ll find a way to cock it up.

  4. How about if we just take a state with sensible regulations like New Jersey and make them binding nation-wide. That should do the trick, or at least that would be a beginning.

  5. I’m not sure I correctly understand the premise, but if one state can put difficult limits on the “Tier 2” that would affect all other states, then some Bigot-run state like California or Illinois could put restrictions in such as enough training to earn an Associate’s Degree in Criminal Justice, or disallow an applicant who’s had a speeding ticket in the last 20 years, or require marksmanship tests that would qualify an applicant for the Secret Service, or a $5000 nonrefundable application fee, etc, etc.

    In other words, *if* (and that’s a big if) I’m reading it right, one single state could, as Justin says, “cock it up”.

    I dunno… I’m starting to lean more toward just being quiet and taking care of myself and my family. Guess this post doesn’t help that position much, huh?

  6. MikeB302000, for the same reason we didn’t take Alabama’s laws on race relations from the middle of last century and make them binding nation-wide. New Jersey doesn’t have gun owners it has gun-n***ers.

  7. If we are going to randomly pull states out of a hat, MikeB, why not Virginia? After all, Virginia and New Jersey have similar populations, but Virginia’s violent crime rate is almost a hundred points lower than NJ’s. Or how about Washington’s laws? Almost the same populations, and almost the same violent crime rates.

    As usual, the codephrase “sensible regulations” translates to nothing short of “civilian disarmament”. It would be a lot easier to discuss anything with you, MikeB, if you were honest with yourself as well as us – you want nothing short of England-style gun laws here in the United States (hence your “at least that would be a beginning” comment). Furthermore, the fact that you want such universally-disarming gun laws here in the States, despite the fact that England is currently suffering from a violent crime rate nearly four times that of the US, thoroughly proves that you are doing nothing more than intentionally and willfully aiding and abeting criminals. The irony of this is that you would blame crime on us firearm-owners, when the reality is that those who disarm law-abiding citizens are the ones responsible for crime.

    How do you sleep at night, MikeB?

  8. Oakland, CA requires a polygraph, a letter from a shrink, insurance, classroom training and a background check (not a criminal record check, they assign an investigator and that person contacts your neighbors, co-workers, former neighbors, former co-workers, etc.).

    They require the same background checks and testing that are done on police trainee recruits…

    I don’t think anyone wants the rest of the nation to be held to that standard.

    as of 1998 there was only one person in this city of 400k with a CCW, according to an FOI request.

    http://www.ninehundred.net/~equalccw/oaklandzen.html

  9. I asked Joe to posit this question. I guess I need to clarify: we aren’t interested in setting the bar at the most stringent of all states that issue but to line up with the training, age, etc. requirements of the most stringent *shall issue* states. Kalifornia etc. are NOT going to give any state reciprocity no matter what.

    North Dakota has taken this approach to try to get reciprocity with South Dakota and Minnesota. Idaho does not have reciprocity with Washington or Nevada– the idea is to fix that without throwing anyone currently eligible for an Idaho license under the bus.

  10. Alphamike:

    That makes more sense to me – thought I can see the downside of a multitiered system. If someone has a Class A Idaho PTC and they are in a state that only honors Class B & C’s training requirements, this could cause someone to easily run afoul of the law. Gun laws while traveling between states are already complicated enough, IMHO.

    That said, some sort of interstate agreement like the one that exists for drivers licenses would see to be the ideal solution, of course that raises the problem of a national database of PTC holders…

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