While many reject the idea of good guys with guns stopping things like mass public shootings, the truth is that much of the time, when it happens, the general public never knows that a mass shooting was going to happen. For every White Settlement or Greenwood Park Mall, you’ve got a dozen that never quite make the same headlines.
Good guys stop all kinds of violent crimes. Often, it’s as they’re happening to them, but not always. Guns are tools that serve hero and villain alike, but they can only serve the hero if he or she is allowed to carry them. Law-abiding people have a tendency to abide by the law, after all, which means that bad laws enable bad people to do bad things.
Gun Owners of America’s Erich Pratt, unsurprisingly, gets it, as he notes in a recent op-ed.
When President Trump recently spoke at the Mack Trucks facility in Macungie, Pennsylvania, gun owners were encouraged to hear him call for national concealed carry reciprocity.
He’s right. Constitutional rights shouldn’t end at a state line.
And the need for reciprocity isn’t theoretical. Armed citizens save lives every year.
Just recently, a Marine veteran carrying a concealed firearm helped police in Massachusetts stop and apprehend a convicted felon who had illegally obtained a firearm and was randomly shooting at motorists.
In Missouri, two armed citizens confronted and stopped an active shooter in a parking lot. According to police, their actions prevented even greater bloodshed.
Stories like these happen all across America. Yet millions of law-abiding gun owners still risk becoming criminals simply by crossing an invisible state line.
You can drive your car across all 50 states. You can take your family, your luggage — even your dog. But in many states, you can’t bring the firearm you legally carry for self-defense back home.
That makes no sense.
No, it doesn’t make any sense. Especially when we remember that the courts have long held that driving is a privilege, not a right. Despite that, my Georgia license is respected in California, New York, and Hawaii, but a Georgia Weapons License isn’t, even though the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld that the Second Amendment rights are, in fact, rights, and they’re individual ones at that.
Again, it makes no sense.
But, as Pratt notes, there are recent examples where good guys with guns were able to help stop deadly attacks. There are numerous other armed citizen stories out there, all the result of a good person having a gun when a gun was needed.
This inane idea of limiting armed carry because of criminal activity ignores the very nature of armed citizens and criminals alike. Criminals won’t obey the sign at the door, and armed citizens will. As a result, the good guys are automatically at a disadvantage.
If I travel to another state, one without reciprocity with my home state of Georgia or constitutional carry on its own, then I’m left defenseless everywhere I go. I cannot lawfully carry in such a situation. That means I have to decide if I’m going to break the carry laws and hope I don’t get caught. No one should be forced into that hole.
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