The state of Minnesota’s unwillingness to recognize concealed carry permits from other states has drawn the ire of several prominent gun-rights groups.
On September 15, the Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association, California Rifle and Pistol Association, Second Amendment Law Center, Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Johnson v. Jacobson, urging the court to grant review in the case and confirm that states must honor carry permits, no matter where in the country they were obtained.
According to an SAF news release, the case challenges Minnesota’s refusal to honor valid concealed-carry permits issued by other states. Mr. Johnson, a long-haul truck driver licensed to carry in Florida and Georgia, cannot legally carry in Minnesota without obtaining a separate Minnesota permit. The Eighth Circuit upheld that requirement.
The SCOTUS brief argues that the Second Amendment’s general right to carry arms in public for self-defense is national in scope and cannot be made to depend on a costly, state-by-state licensing gauntlet.
In fact, from the colonial era through the 19th century, “traveler’s exception” laws routinely exempted visitors from concealed-carry restrictions that applied to locals. The brief documents that tradition in the colonial era through the 19th Century. Amici contend that history demands summary reversal of the 8th Circuit’s ruling in favor of Minnesota.
“The right to carry does not stop at state lines,” said Kostas Moros, SAF director of legal research and education Kostas Moros. “A truck driver who already holds permits from Florida and Georgia should not have to fly to Minnesota, appear in person at a sheriff’s office, pay another set of fees and complete another training course just to exercise the same constitutional right he already has. Our historical tradition offered travelers more leeway than residents when it came to the right to carry. Minnesota’s scheme turns that tradition on its head.”
The brief also details the practical burden of the current patchwork: California nonresident permits can cost $500 to $2,000 and take months or years, some states still refuse nonresident applications altogether and one couple documented more than $12,800 in fees to assemble permits covering 46 states and D.C. It further notes that licensed carriers are overwhelmingly law-abiding. Florida, for example, has revoked only 0.36% of more than 6.6 million permits issued since 1987.
Speaking for his organization, CCRKBA Executive Director Andrew Gottlieb said in a news release that the Constitution doesn’t “become optional” every time an American crosses a state line.
“Minnesota is willing to recognize some carry permits issued by other states while rejecting others, forcing lawful gun owners into a confusing patchwork of government mandates,” Gottlieb said. “Americans should not have to navigate fifty different bureaucracies to determine whether exercising a constitutional right will turn them into a criminal when they cross a state border. That is exactly the kind of undue burden the Supreme Court should eliminate.”
Ultimately, Gottlieb said the case is about much more than one truck driver and just one state.
“It is about whether state governments can erect costly bureaucratic barriers that leave ordinary citizens wondering whether their constitutional rights end at the state line,” he concluded. “The Supreme Court should take this case and force Minnesota to uphold the Constitution.”
