Today, The House Judiciary Committee green-lit two different gun bills to move forward in the legislative process.
These two bills include:
(You can click the “Get Alerts” link on the website if you want to receive email updates about these bills)
What Do These Gun Bills Do?
The name gives it away. This bill would allow for conceal carry holders to travel across state lines with their firearms as long as they have a valid conceal carry license in their resident state.
This bill would make it a lot simpler for individuals with CCW to travel with their weapon. They wouldn’t need to consult the internet to figure out all the applicable laws every single time they cross a state border. Likewise, if you live near a state that has bad conceal carry laws (but you have a CCW), you would be able to take it to that state without any additional requirements (unless the bill gets amended).
NRA board member Willes Lee had this to say about the bill:
“The Second Amendment affirms our God-given right of self-defense. National Right-to-Carry reciprocity remains the NRA, and my, number one legislative priority. It is about time Congress moved on President Trump’s campaign promise.”
Anytime the government says it is going to “fix” something, I get worried.
This bill is being considered to better enforce current laws. Specifically, regarding the NICS reporting metrics. It was opened up by a Texas rep because of the terrible church shooting that recently occurred in Sutherland Springs.
State/federal agencies (the USAF) did not report the shooters (Devin Kelley’s) past court-martial to the FBI, which would have outright banned him from purchasing a weapon.
This bill would force these agencies to accurately and reliably report these types of events, so as to prevent a similar occurrence from happening. It would be done through fiscal punishments (IE: Not paying heads of departments that do not cooperate in time).
It will also reward states who do report all the necessary information in a timely manner by giving them federal grant preference for funding.
However, one part of this bill (which has not yet been amended) requires keeping track of how many times bump-stocks are used in shootings. The reasoning behind this rather erroneous addition within this specific bill, I do not know. But I imagine (based on past data) that not many shooters have used bump stocks, so this could potentially not turn out to be an anti-gun victory at all.
So in summary: enforce the current law better, and look at bump stock statistics.
Overall Opinion
I’m obviously 100% in favor of HR 38 (conceal carry reciprocity). I’ve even written articles about how to CCW responsibly. Call your rep and tell them to support it.
I’m not yet sold on HR 4434, but I haven’t yet fully understood the entire scope of what it is attempting to accomplish. I’m all in favor of the NICS reporting system to get better. Felons, domestic violence offenders, pedophiles, etc. should not have easy access to purchase guns. Some may find a way to get them anyway, but we don’t need to make it easy for them. And this would at least make it so the police know they shouldn’t be carrying one if they ever get caught/pulled over. However, it seems like there are some anti-gun components of this bill, which do not tie into the NICS checks at all. I’ll be giving it a much deeper read in the coming weeks and will have an article specifically covering it.
I encourage anyone reading this to give these bills a “follow” (as described above), so you can keep tabs on what happens with them in the coming months. Regardless of your opinion on either of them, these are both really important gun bills that will probably impact the future of gun rights in the US.