Alabamans woke up Sunday to the right to carry guns without a license.
The change, implemented by state law passed last year, marked a major milestone: half of the 50 American states now allow people to carry handguns without first seeking a permit.
Thirteen years ago, only two countries – Vermont and Alaska – allows its residents the unfettered right to carry guns, depending on the Constitution’s Second Amendment as a blanket permit for all.
But since 2010, nearly two dozen states have followed suit, with 11 of them passing permit-free laws in the past three years.
Many movements have chalked up wins in the state legislature with remarkable speed, drawing cheers from supporters of gun rights while raising fears among reformers that the change will lead to more guns in the streets – and possibly more violence.
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“If you’re a legal citizen, you should be able to exercise all of your constitutional rights,” said Andi Turner, legislative director for the Texas Rifle Association. “Half the state of the union now knows.”
The permit system generally requires applicants to demonstrate safe gun handling, as well as demonstrate knowledge that is often complex gun law and use lethal force.
“We have seen in the past decade a very concerted effort by the corporate gun lobby, especially the NRA,” said Nick Wilson, gun violence researcher at the Center for American Progress. It has been a very successful campaign for the gun lobby. It helps the bottom line… But too much for anyone concerned about public safety.
State law changes have dovetailed with two other trends that bode well for gun advocates. First, the covid-19 pandemic is unleashed unprecedented increase in sales. And second, people of color and women make up a larger portion of buyers, a diverse community buying guns that have traditionally skewed male, white and conservative.
Gun violence has also been on the rise since the pandemic began, with more firearm deaths an increase of 20% from 2019 to 2021according to a recently published study by JAMA Network Open.
With big-ticket gun reforms like the Assault Weapons Ban or universal background checks stalled in Congress, the state’s legislation is a defeat for the reform movement, which sees the trend as a threat to public safety.
Sociological studies tend to show that an increase in gun ownership generally leads to an increase in violence.
“It’s no coincidence that in states with a permissive approach to guns in general, you have higher rates of gun deaths,” said Adam Skaggs, legal counsel for the Giffords Law Center, a nonpartisan reform group.
Over the last five years, researchers have increasingly shown that loosening restrictions on carrying handguns is also associated with problems such as increased gun theft and road rage, according to Stanford Law professor John Donohue.
Allowing more people to carry guns also hampers police work, Donohue said — partly from an uptick in gun theft and accidental shootings and partly because the increased risk of being shot reduces police efficiency.
“One of the unintended consequences of putting more weapons on the streets is that it hurts police performance,” Donohue said. “You see clearance rates for all crimes go down when states move in the direction of getting more people to carry guns.”
Counting the number of states with carry-without-a-consent laws could expand their reach, Skaggs said. These states tend to be small states with rural populations, while larger urban states like California and New York tend to take a more restrictive approach to firearms.
More than one-third of Americans live in 25 states that allow illegal possession.
And in the same way that gun rights groups have pushed ahead with illegal legislation in red states, liberal-dominated legislatures have pushed opposing measures.
New York tightened gun restrictions after last year’s mass shooting in Buffalo. Delaware enacted a state-level Assault Weapons Ban last year. A ballot measure passed last year by Oregon voters requires a permit for all gun purchases and limits magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, though the law bound in court.
But the conservative-stacked Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the case of New York State Rifle and Pistol Co v Bruen last year has also been made. harder for state legislatures to keep people from carrying a gun. The ruling strikes down a New York law that requires a concealed handgun license to demonstrate a special need to carry a weapon.
The ruling stopped short of removing the permit to carry a handgun altogether, however.
“The opinion made it very clear that there is nothing in the Constitution that requires doing so without a permit,” Skaggs said. “‘Constitutional laws may sound good with alliteration and the way they roll off the tongue, but they are fundamentally untrue and misleading. Guns in general must be significantly regulated.
Still, Bruen’s decision could have a big impact on the state-level gun debate, according to Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade group.
“Left and right countries may become more polarized,” Oliva said. “And you’re going to keep seeing them go to court and say, ‘What’s right here?’ And if the justices followed what came out of Bruen, they would find the assault weapons ban unconstitutional, the magazine ban unconstitutional, the age limit and background checks on ammunition purchases unconstitutional.
The state that does not have a permit could become a majority before the end of the year.
Delegate Virginia Marie March (R) pre-filing constitutional bills in November for this year’s legislative session. However, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants the issue to be a priority when Florida lawmakers reconvene in April.
In Nebraska, an unauthorized carry bill failed to clear the threshold to overcome a filibuster in the state Senate last year by two votes. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts (R) plans to try again this year.