RECIPROCITY SCHEMES

A national movement is afoot to ease the stranglehold that state laws have placed on law-abiding travelers. Introduced at state and federal levels, reciprocity laws seek to guarantee that people who may legally carry firearms in their home states cannot be denied their rights when in another state. It seems that the Second Amendment is providing no protection at all for travelers, and a legislative solution is being pursued.

Your home state s rules would not apply when you go "abroad." You would be subject to the laws, regulations and customs of the state you are in at the moment. Most proposals seek to obtain this relief only for individuals with government-issued permits. Supporters typically cite the portion of Article IV of the Constitution, known as the full faith and credit clause, which says in pertinent part, "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other state;". This sets a model similar to marriage and driver licenses.

Other attempts seek to allow any person who is not acting criminally to be free from harassment or arrest for simple possession of a legally owned firearm, regardless of the state involved. This would emulate the way people are basically free to speak their minds independent of their location (and no license to exercise the First Amendment is available at this time, except that broadcasts are strictly forbidden without a government license).

Some states take the approach that, if your permit is similar to ours, and your state formally honors ours, then we will honor yours. A method is then set up to determine if the two state s requirements are a rough match. Such comparisons are problematic because they once again subject your rights to bureaucratic review, as in the days before "shall issue" permits, and indeed, states have already experienced difficulty in agreeing if their "standards" are a match. When the officials decide there is no match, they remove the right to carry between those states. To link all 50 states to each other and thus restore rights to properly government-licensed individuals would require 1,225 pacts.

Each state s requirements are of course different. Studying the laws of your own state (a common requirement) hardly prepares you and is certainly not a match for the laws in any other state. Authorities will have to ignore the "similarity" requirement to declare a match. Florida requires no shooting test for its permit, Virginia asks for proof of competence with a gun but does not define it further, Texas requires 50 shots at three distances with all shots timed, Arizona requires seven hits out of ten, and so it goes, state to state. Virginia has officially determined that no state but Tennessee matches its requirements.

Some states are considering honoring anyone who has a state-issued permit. Some will issue a permit to anyone qualified, resident or not, getting around the problem in yet another way. A handful of states have no permit system, presumably leaving them out of the picture when their residents are on the road, or for you when you visit. A few have introduced laws that would allow you to drive through their states on a "continuous journey," or to enter the state with a gun but only for a competition or designated event.

A federal bill seeks to require all states to honor the permits of all other states. Residents in Vermont are excluded because they need no permit to carry in the first place. The 98% of Americans who bear arms but have refused to sign up for a government carry-rights permit are also left out of these plans.

Rumors are swirling about which state has adopted what policy, and relying on a rumor where no rule exists can get you arrested. Viewing the printed statute yourself is a good way to help avoid rumors. Laws may offer less protection when new, before on-the-street police policy is established and well known throughout the law-enforcement community. Do not assume from the information provided below that reciprocity exists, only that the states are looking into the possibilities, and you might want to too.

It would be nice if there was a rock-solid reliable place to call to find out exactly where reciprocity exists, but there is none at the present time. Besides, a complete answer with precisely all the do s and don ts is more than you can possibly get over the phone. The job of telling you is not the role of the police, the sheriff, the DA, the AG, the library or anyone else.

One solution that addresses these problems is the proposed American Historical Rights Protection Act. This basically says that if a person has a gun, the person isn t a criminal, and the gun isn t illegal, then that is not a crime, based on the 2nd and 14th Amendments.

Four states currently have some form of recognition for out-of-state permit holders check with them for details: Idaho, Indiana, Michigan and Wyoming.

These states have passed laws that would allow some bureau within the state (indicated in parenthesis) to cut deals with a bureau in another state, or they have set up other conditions that might lead them to recognize each other s permits check with them for details: Arkansas (State Police), Connecticut (Commissioner of State Police), Georgia (County Probate Judge), Kentucky (Sheriff), Louisiana (Deputy Secretary of Public Safety Services), Massachusetts (Chief of Police), Mississippi (Dept. of Public Safety), Missouri (residents currently prohibited from concealed carry), Montana (Governor), New Hampshire (Chief of Police), North Dakota (Chief of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation), Oklahoma (State Bureau of Investigation), Pennsylvania (Attorney General), Rhode Island (Attorney General), South Carolina (Law Enforcement Division), Tennessee (Commissioner of Safety), Texas (Dept. of Public Safety), Utah (Dept. of Public Safety), Virginia (Circuit Court), West Virginia (Sheriff). The different authorities named in this list are a measure of the consistency of the laws from state to state.

A number of states will issue firearms permits to non-residents if you meet their requirements check with them for details: Florida, Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

If, after reading these lists, you get the sense that reciprocity schemes don t solve the problem and unshackle honest citizens, well, you re not alone.

It would be laughable if it wasn t so pathetic to watch decent Americans scrounge for the stale crumbs of civil-rights reciprocity schemes, instead of demanding the rights they are entitled to, clearly guaranteed in the Constitution.

Alan Korwin is a full-time free-lance writer and author of seven books on gun law, including Gun Laws of America Every Federal Gun Law on the Books with Plain English Summaries. Permission to reprint this article is granted to non-profit organizations, provided credit is given to Alan Korwin, Bloomfield Press, Phoenix, AZ. All others, just call us.