The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has become one of the biggest bogeymen deployed by Democrats ahead of the November elections, though I’d venture to guess that most critics (and a fair number of the project’s supporters) have taken a close look at the 887-page outline of the group’s policy proposals. 

Despite the extensive recommendations on reigning in the abuses of the federal government, Project 2025 doesn’t contain much talk about the Second Amendment. In fact, those words don’t appear a single time in the document. Despite that, Brady head Kris Brown is on a crusade to terrify voters about Project 2025 and what it supposedly would mean for gun owners and gun control activists alike, claiming it’s chock full of policies that would undo the work of the gun control lobby.

 First, Project 2025 is explicit about putting more guns in schools. Specifically, it would support the arming of teachers with concealed weapons, and hire veterans, retired police officers and other trained gun owners as armed guards. This would flood our schools with firearms and force our teachers to become armed guards—all of which would make our kids less safe.

Now, if you search Project 2025 for the phrases “armed teachers”, “concealed weapons”, or “concealed carry”, you won’t find the document void of any mention of those topics. Brown doesn’t provide any links or direct quotes from the document to buttress her claims about Project 2025, and she only includes a couple of anecdotal incidents (one involving a teacher who took their own life at a school, and the other a school resource officer in Massachusetts who had a negligent discharge of their weapon on campus) to support her contention that having armed guards makes schools (and students) less safe. In truth, research has shown that the fastest way to stop an active shooter on a school campus is to have both a school resource officer who can engage the threat and a percentage of armed school staff sheltering in place with students who can defend a classroom if the attacker makes their way inside. 

Brown also contends that Project 2025 would greatly expand our right to carry. 

Finally, Project 2025 promises to enact concealed carry reciprocity legislation—rolling back states’ strong gun safety measures and increasing the risk of gun violence for everyone, no matter where you live.

Does your community want to keep loaded and hidden guns out of parks, grocery stores or childcare centers? If Project 2025 is implemented, you can’t.

Has your state passed universal background checks, red flag laws and safe storage requirements? If Project 2025 is implemented, this progress gets undone.

As I mentioned, a search of the full Project 2025 document found zero results for the phrase “concealed carry.” The same is true for “right to carry reciprocity”, “right to carry”, and “concealed firearm”. There are ten uses of the word “reciprocity” in the document, but none of them relate to the right to carry. Visa reciprocity and trade reciprocity are both mentioned, but again, I can’t find any evidence that Project 2025 “promises to enact concealed carry reciprocity legislation”, as much as I’d like to see its inclusion. 

Brown’s fearmongering is cringeworthy on several different levels. First, most states already have at least some form of reciprocal agreement when it comes to the right to carry, and many states like Texas have “universal” reciprocity, meaning they recognize any and all valid out-of-state carry licenses. National right-to-carry reciprocity wouldn’t be a huge change for most Americans. Similar to the Bruen decision, the impact of such a law would mainly be felt in those states that are already extraordinarily hostile to the Second Amendment like California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, which refuse to recognize any permits issued by other states (and in the case of California and New York, don’t even have a process by which non-residents can apply for a state-issued license) 

But right-to-carry reciprocity doesn’t change anything about the time, manner, and place where firearms can be carried. Any local or statewide “gun-free zones” that currently exist wouldn’t be undone by a national right-to-carry law, though they may very well crumble under the weight of judicial review when they’re challenged in court. It’s the Second Amendment, not right-to-carry reciprocity, that those “gun-free zones” are in conflict with. 

The same is true of “red flag” laws, “universal” background checks, and storage mandates; none of which have anything to do with right-to-carry reciprocity. 

Reciprocity is based on the simple premise that if you can legally exercise your Second Amendment rights in your home state, you don’t have to forsake them when you cross the state line. There’s nothing scary, ominous, or unusual about that. If my Virginia driver’s license is recognized in 49 other states and the District of Columbia, why shouldn’t my concealed carry license be treated the same way? 

If Project 2025 really does embrace all of the policies Brown claims it does, that would be a good thing. From what I can tell, however, the document is void of any mention of gun owners, right-to-carry, armed teachers, and the Second Amendment. The lone policy recommendation Brown mentions that I can find in Project 2025 is a call to move the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives back to the purview of the Treasury Department instead of the Justice Department (page 709). Even then, Project 2025 merely states that “Congress should examine whether to return to the Treasury’s former in-house law enforcement capabilities via the of the United States Coast Guard and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.”

Bringing these agencies back from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, respectively, would allow Treasury, in the case of the U.S. Coast Guard, to increase border security via a vigilance with respect to economic crimes (for example, drug smuggling and tax evasion). 

Project 2025 doesn’t even call for the dismantling of the ATF, but Brown contends that moving ATF’s functions from DOJ to Treasury would “make oversight of illegal or dangerous gun sales nearly impossible, increase gun trafficking and make it more difficult to solve gun crimes.” 

Why would that be the case? Brown never offers an explanation or any evidence to support her claims. She just expects her readers at Ms. to take her accusations at face value… and to be terrified by her assertions. 

If you’re in favor of criminalizing a fundamental civil right, then Kamala Harris is your best candidate this November. If, on the other hand, you think the right to keep and bear arms is worth protecting and defending, then I hope you’ll become a VIP or VIP Gold member and help us in our mission to secure our Second Amendment rights and push back against the misinformation from the gun control lobby. Use the promo code FIGHT when you sign up today and take 60% off your membership!