Kansas passes right-to-carry, only three states now completely ban carrying of concealed handguns
Now only Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Illinois completely ban carrying concealed handguns and the chances of passage in Nebraska look good.
The state House on Thursday overrode Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' veto of a concealed weapons bill, allowing it to become law this summer.
The vote was 91-33, giving supporters seven votes more than the required two-thirds majority. The Senate voted 30-10 for the override Wednesday night, three votes more than needed.
The new law, taking effect July 1, will permit Kansans who are U.S. citizens to apply for concealed-carry permits at their local sheriffs' offices. Applicants must be 21 and take firearms training, and hidden weapons still will be banned in some places, including schools, churches, libraries and courthouses. . . .
The vote was 91-33, giving supporters seven votes more than the required two-thirds majority. The Senate voted 30-10 for the override Wednesday night, three votes more than needed.
The new law, taking effect July 1, will permit Kansans who are U.S. citizens to apply for concealed-carry permits at their local sheriffs' offices. Applicants must be 21 and take firearms training, and hidden weapons still will be banned in some places, including schools, churches, libraries and courthouses. . . .
posted by John Lott at 6:03 PM
8 Comments:
Don't forget DC. I know it isn't a state, but we count for something don't we?
Believe it or not, but DC actually has a concealed handgun law on the books. Obviously, the only problem is that you can not get a handgun to get the concealed handgun permit for. In any case, there is some reason to differentiate states from what is essentially just a city. But thanks for mentioning it.
I believe you, but since you want to get technical: While DC may technically have 'a concealed handgun law', it isn't 'shall issue', and is effectively worthless. It is a 'written permission of the mayor' political back-scratching law. And current Mayor Anthony Williams is one of those unfortunately misguided individuals who feel that the second ammendment does not acknowledge an individual right. I know of no documented case of an ordinary citizen ever getting a concealed hangun permit in DC (by law, good for one year) any time since 1976. Also, it is a common misconception that DC residents cannot own handguns. They can, the law states that private citizens can't possess them in the district. Legal purchase, of course, is another hurdle given that DC will likely never issue a business license for a FFL - even if congress does pass the Personal Protection Act and/or repeal the hangun ban. In that case I will get a personal C&R FFL. But, certainly, even now, handguns can be received as gifts, or ownership can pre-date taking up residence in the District. There is even an indoor shooting range in MD that will rent storage space to DC residents who need someplace to store their hanguns. Disappointingly, the NRA HQ range in VA, despite being an otherwise excellent facility, does not offer this service to it's members.
In any event, State or no State, DC residents are second class citizens on any number of fronts!
BTW: I've enjoyed your writings, and (as a right leaning libertarian) appreciate your work on the Committee for Justice.
Dear Response 39 and Anonymous:
I agree that MD has a restrictive law, but I still think that it is useful to point whether states have any provision or not. Surely that doesn't stop people from breaking down yet other ways. The reason for looking at whether there is any provision though is relevant because up until this last week Kansas was in the banned campl For Anonymous, I agree that DC is obviously not "shall issue." I also agree with the other points that you raise.
Thanks.
The real question is: If a person could get a concealed handgun permit signed by the mayor (perhaps through a civil rights lawsuit), and had a legally obtained/owned handgun (currently stored outside of the district), would possesion of said handgun in DC still be an arrestable offense?
Dear Anonymous:
Unfortunately, you still couldn't carry a concealed handgun even if you got the permit because your gun would have to be registered and the city will not register anyone's handgun. Of course, there is no way that the mayor or anyone else would grant you the concealed handgun permit. This only thing that this law means is that if the congress ever forrced the city to rescind its handgun ban, unless some other legislation was passed people might be able to start carrying concealed handguns.
I'm not sure how useful it is to distinguish the states that prohibit CCW outright from the ones that issue on a discretionary basis. To the average law-abiding citizen, discretionary issue is just another way of saying "fuhgeddaboudit." In fact, as a rule I'm not even convinced that the traditionally no-issue states are generally more anti-gun than may-issue states are. Illinois is, of course, but apart from that, nearly all the worst offenders overall - California, New York, you name it - are may-issue states, not no-issue states.
Don't get me wrong; I was delighted to see no-issue Kansas finally go the way of no-issue Missouri, no-issue Texas, no-issue Arkansas, no-issue Ohio and no-issue Kentucky. Yet none of these developments were nearly as significant, politically at least, as a shall issue law in California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, or Rhode Island would have been.
Dear xlrq:
I think that the three groups are distinct from each other. Discretionary states do issue some permits, at least in their rural areas. What I found in my research was that rural areas many times issued as many permits under discretionary rules as they did under right-to-carry. There were several counties in California, including populous Orange County, that have issued a fair number of permits.
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