House Committee Advances Plan to Ease Gun-Carrying Restrictions

A House committee advanced legislation Wednesday that would allow Americans who legally carry concealed guns in their home states to travel anywhere in the U.S. with their firearms, overriding state laws that tightly restrict who can bear arms in public.

The House Judiciary Committee’s 19-11 vote, along party lines, marked Congress’s first action on firearm legislation since a gunman killed 58 people at an Oct. 1 music festival in Las Vegas and a shooter in Texas opened fire at a church on Nov. 5, killing 26 people.

GOP leaders told Rep. Richard Hudson (R., N.C.), the bill’s sponsor, that the legislation would get a vote on the House floor before the end of the year, potentially as soon as next week, according to a House GOP aide. Securing the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate will be much tougher. Republicans hold 52 of the chamber’s seats.

The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, described by the National Rifle Association as a priority, would smooth over gaps in state laws, providing gun owners consistency and certainty when they travel, its supporters said. At the moment, some states recognize out-of-state permits to carry concealed guns through reciprocity agreements, but many don’t.

“I don’t believe that my right to protect myself to protect my family, to protect those around me, should end at the state line,” said Rep. John Rutherford (R., Fla.) at Wednesday’s hearing.

Democrats said the bill would sabotage public-safety choices states have made about who should be able to carry a gun within their borders.

Travelers from 12 states where residents can carry concealed guns without a permit could walk around with their firearms in states like New York, where residents must undergo vetting and obtain approval from law-enforcement officials for the same right, they said.

“Who’s coming to your office to say, in the wake of mass shooting after mass shooting, ‘It’s about time that we require and permit and enable anyone to carry a concealed weapon in any state in this country?” Rep. Ted Deutch (D., Fla.) asked the Republican committee chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia.

Mr. Goodlatte said he has heard from many constituents who believe they would be safer and could keep others safer if they could carry their concealed guns into other states.

The bill has a built-in enforcement mechanism: People carrying concealed guns out of state could sue and recover damages from police who detained them because of their weapons.

A version of the bill introduced by Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) is pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Cornyn’s previous reciprocity measure in 2013 garnered 57 votes, including 12 from Democrats.

The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized a constitutional right to own gun for self-defense but has declined, to date, to review cases exploring the extent to which the Second Amendment protects carrying firearms openly or concealed.

Federal law prohibits people with felony convictions or a misdemeanor conviction for domestic violence from owning a gun, but conditions for carrying concealed guns are set by states.

Some states require training, background checks and cooling-off periods that disqualify applicants with recent misdemeanor convictions for drunken-driving offenses. Others have age restrictions.

According to the gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety, 19 states require no firearm-safety training for permission to carry a concealed gun. Legislation to eliminate permit requirements was introduced in at least 15 states and passed in two of them this year.

A study published last month in the American Journal of Public Health found that states where law-enforcement officials have little or no discretion over who can obtain permits to carry concealed weapons experience 10% to 20% higher rates of handgun homicides than states where officials have broad discretion over permits.

Older studies of concealed-carry laws have yielded a mix of results, with some finding they were linked to lower homicide rates.

The House Judiciary panel also Wednesday approved a bipartisan bill aimed at?shoring up?the?federal?background-check database queried when people buy firearms from dealers.

Republicans rejected an amendment to the legislation that would have banned gun modifications that allowed rifles used by the Las Vegas gunman to simulate automatic fire, saying it wasn’t germane to fixing the background check system.

A similar bill in the Senate recently picked up the support of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and faces a far easier path to becoming law? than does the reciprocity legislation. The bill, first introduced by Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R., Texas) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), is supported by the NRA.