It is January 23, 2018, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has ignored national reciprocity for 46 consecutive weeks.
Breitbart News reported that national reciprocity was introduced in the Senate on March 1, 2017, but McConnell has yet to say a word about it in public.
National reciprocity was introduced in the House on January 3, 2017, where it suffered a similar fate at the hands of Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.). It was December 6, 2017, before enough conservatives banded together to overcome Ryan’s stonewalling and pass the measure. Conservatives in the Senate will no doubt have to do the same thing if national reciprocity is to have a chance of passage.
McConnell’s lack of interest in reciprocity is characteristic of the ruling class. After all, members of that class have around-the-clock, taxpayer-funded armed security wherever they go, so their lives are the same with or without reciprocity for concealed carry permits. But for the common man, for the concealed carry permit holders in Kentucky who voted for McConnell in 2014, national reciprocity is the linchpin of freedom. With it, they can keep their pistol close at hand for self-defense as they traverse this great country. Without it, their right to keep and bear arms is often limited by a state border.
In fact, the current patchwork of concealed carry laws creates an environment where concealed carry permit holders from Kentucky can carry their gun for self-defense in certain states but are mandated by law to put the gun away when entering states like California, where Democrat lawmakers refuse to recognize any concealed permit from outside their state. Although some have tried to frame this state-by-state scenario as a states’ rights issue, the reality is that natural rights are not to be infringed by any government, federal or state (see McDonald v. Chicago [2010]).
National reciprocity provides McConnell the ability to protect the Second Amendment. He can end the infringement that currently prevents concealed carry permit holders from exercising their right to self-defense in every state. But as of right now, he appears uninterested.
McConnell has ignored national reciprocity for 46 consecutive weeks.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.