Loyalty belongs to the Constitution, not to any politician. If we expect anti-gun politicians to be held accountable for attacking our rights, we should expect pro-gun politicians to be held accountable for defending them. That’s not disloyalty. It’s citizenship.
At a June 23 rally in Macungie, Pennsylvania, President Trump asked the crowd how they felt about national right-to-carry legislation, prompting an eruption of applause, but gun owners have heard this before, twice in fact. The question is not whether concealed carry reciprocity is a worthy legislative goal, because it plainly is. The question is whether this administration will do what the last Trump administration did not, and whether the gears of the federal government are turning in line with the president’s rhetoric. The record on both counts is not encouraging.
“The NRA, everybody, they really have been, they’ve been with me right from the beginning. And Bill [Bachenburg, NRA President] asked me, would I support the national right to carry legislation. How do you feel about national right to carry?… National right to carry. Yeah, we’re working on it.”
A Bill That Has Gone Nowhere for Nearly a Decade
The Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act is not a new idea. H.R. 38, introduced by Representative Richard Hudson of North Carolina, has been submitted in every Congress since 2017. In December of that year, the Republican-controlled House passed the bill on a 231–198 vote, but it never reached the Senate floor, blocked by Senate Democrats, as the Republican majority lacked the votes to invoke cloture and break a filibuster.
By Darwin Nercesian
