Over 86% of Police Chiefs and Sheriffs Support National Concealed Carry Reciprocity
Imagine if your driver’s license was not officially recognized in USA states other than your own. That would mean every time you drove across state lines, you’d be violating those states’ laws. Now imagine if some states accepted your state’s license, but they added on traffic laws that your state didn’t have. That would mean you’d have to know each state’s particular laws as you drove through them, or you could be ticketed or jailed.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Important Judicial Decisions Regarding Self-Defense Law ]
That’s the current state of affairs in the lawful act of concealed carrying of defensive firearms. The USA consists of a complex patchwork of concealed carry legislation state-by-state that unsuspecting responsible law-abiding armed self-defenders can easily be ignorant of and in danger of unwittingly and innocently violating.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, US Supreme Court Affirms Right to Carry Arms in Public for Self-Defense ]
A majority of states do allow for concealed carry reciprocity: the agreement between two or more states to recognize each other’s concealed carry permits. This means if your home state’s permit is recognized by another state through reciprocity, you’re allowed to carry a concealed weapon according to that state’s laws, which can still vary between states.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Wyoming Repeals Gun-Free Zones in Most Public Places ]
But several states do not recognize concealed handgun permits from other states, including California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Brief Answers for People Who Are Against the 2nd Amendment ]
Since the Second Amendment of the USA Bill of Rights federally and nationally protects the civil right of the people to keep and bear arms, just as the First Amendment federally and nationally protects the civil right of the people to speak freely, imagine the injustice if free speech were regulated differently state-by-state in such a manner.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Worldviews and Emotional Assumptions in the Gun Civil Rights Debate ]
In a March 10, 2025 op-ed article in The Washington Times titled The Importance of Concealed Carry Reciprocity: Over 86% of Police Chiefs and Sheriffs Support National Reciprocity, John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and author most recently of Gun Control Myths, writes about a bill before Congress that would let people who can legally carry a concealed handgun in their own state carry it across state lines.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Concealed Carry Permit Reciprocity Maps ]
He says, “Despite all the fears of gun control advocates, there is a reason that over 86% of police chiefs and sheriffs support national reciprocity. And over 90% of street police officers support concealed handgun laws. These are the people who see first-hand how reciprocity and concealed carry work. They know how important police are in deterring crime, but they also know that police almost always arrive at the crime scene after the criminal commits the crime and that self-defense is crucial to keeping people safe. Overwhelmingly, academic research finds that letting people carry concealed handguns reduces crime.”
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Survey: Protection Is the Main Reason People Own a Gun ]
Lott continues, “The peer-reviewed research…shows that murder rates decline when people carry concealed handguns, be they men or women. But a woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3 to 4 times more than a man doing the same.”
[ Read the SemperVerus article, 20 Reasons to Concealed Carry a Defensive Firearm ]
He ends with, “Police are extremely important. But there is no way for 720,000 police officers to be everywhere and protect 340 million people at once. Let’s make it so [armed] Americans aren’t afraid to go across state borders.”
Read the entire op-ed article here.
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