End to Shutdown Would Open Door for Vote on Concealed Carry Reciprocity Bill

The Senate reached a tentative agreement to re-open the federal government late on Sunday evening, and if the House concurs with the package approved by the upper chamber the Schumer Shutdown could be over in a matter of days. 

Once the shutdown is over the House is expected to return to regular business, and that includes a potential floor vote on HR 38, the “Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2025” that was placed on the House calendar just before the shutdown began. 

Under the bill, which currently has 189 sponsors, “a person who is not prohibited by Federal law from possessing, transporting, shipping, or receiving a firearm, who is carrying a valid identification document containing a photograph of the person, and who is carrying a valid license or permit which is issued pursuant to the law of a State and which permits the person to carry a concealed firearm or is entitled to carry a concealed firearm in the State in which the person resides, may possess or carry a concealed handgun (other than a machine gun or destructive device) that has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce” in any state that issues concealed carry licenses or “does not prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms by residents of the State for lawful purposes.”

Unlike some earlier bills that laid out a national standard of right-to-carry reciprocity, HR 38 recognizes the fact that more than half of the 50 sttaes have adopted permitless carry laws that allow lawful gun owners to legally carry without the need for a government-issued permission slip. That means that residents of those permitless carry states could carry in places like California, Maryland, and the District of Columbia without having an actual permit, so long as they can legally carry back home. 

As you might imagine, gun control activists are firmly opposed to HR 38, including author and retired Marine Anthony Swofford, who complains that the bill is “federal overreach of the highest order, and of the style conservatives claim to despise.”

For decades, conservatives have claimed to stand for states’ rights — except, apparently, if a state attempts to protect its own citizens from gun violence. This legislation is a Washington-imposed, gun lobby-approved, one-size-fits-all law that overrides local control in the name of political theater and the gun industry’s bottom line. You can’t preach limited government on Monday and mandate nationwide gun permissiveness every other day of the week.

I consider myself a conservative, and I utterly abhor the phrase “states’ rights.” People have rights, while states have powers. And in my humble opinion, states shouldn’t have the power to negate the exercise of a civil right just because you don’t have a piece of paper. Swofford argues that states with stringent training mandates (and sky-high application fees for carry permits) would be forced to allow residents from states with looser licensing standards to bear arms, which he warns “would be highly dangerous for civilians and law enforcement.”

Of course, we’ve heard that exact same argument about permitless carry in general, and yet none of the 29 states that have adopted that standard have seen the need to revisit or repeal the law. 

State laws governing where firearms can lawfully be carried wouldn’t be impacted by HR 38, so places like Times Square would remain a “gun-free zone.” If HR 38 sought to preempt those local laws that would arguably be the federal overreach that Swofford complains about, but as written the legislation would simply ensure that our right to keep and bear arms doesn’t stop at the border of the state where we live… just like every other enumerated right. 

Passage in the House isn’t guaranteed, and its odds in the Senate are pretty long, but HR 38 would be a huge step in recognizing the fundamental importance of our Second Amendment rights. Gun owners should be contacting their congresscritters and urging them to get behind the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2025, and hopefully we can get a win in the lower chamber once Chuck Schumer’s shutdown has finally come to an end. 

Editor’s Note: After more than 40 days of screwing Americans, a few Dems have finally caved. The Schumer Shutdown was never about principle—just inflicting pain for political points.

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