The Second Amendment stops at too many tollbooths

On June 23, standing before a crowd in Pennsylvania, President Trump was asked where he stood on a national right to carry.

His answer was four words: “Yeah, we’re working on it.”

The crowd roared.

For millions of law-abiding gun owners, those words pointed toward something they have awaited for decades: an end to a system that treats a constitutional right like a privilege that must be renewed at every state line.

Let’s be honest about where things stand.

The president has not signed anything, and no national reciprocity law exists today. The Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act cleared a House committee last fall but has stalled in the Senate.

Our rights are only as strong as our willingness to defend them.

This is the starting line, not the finish line. But it is the right race to run, because the issue reaches far beyond the convenience of carrying a firearm across state borders.

I think about that every time I drive from my home in upstate New York to North Carolina to visit my son, daughter-in-law, and grandson.

I travel through New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. Four states. Four sets of gun laws. Four different answers to the same question: What rights does a free citizen carry when he crosses an invisible line on a map?

We accept this with almost no other right.

My driver’s license is honored in all 50 states. My freedom to speak, worship, and remain secure in my home does not evaporate at a tollbooth.

President Trump has made the same point since 2015, comparing a carry permit to a driver’s license: If one works in every state, so should the other.

The argument is common sense. The principle beneath it runs deeper.

The Second Amendment does not create the right to self-defense. It recognizes a natural right the founders understood to be endowed by God.

The right to keep and bear arms is not a permission slip issued by the government. It is the people’s right of self-preservation.

The founders knew what they were guarding against because they had lived under it.

Strip people of the means to defend themselves, and every other freedom becomes a favor granted by those in power. Free speech becomes a suggestion. Religious liberty becomes a privilege.

History is brutally consistent on this point: Disarmament often comes before oppression, not after it.

RELATED: ‘Shall not be infringed’ — even if you’re high, Supreme Court rules

Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Yet over the past century, America has moved from treating the right to bear arms as a birthright of citizenship to treating it, in too many places, as a government-granted privilege hedged in by fees, waiting periods, and paperwork.

The result is a maze of state and local laws so inconsistent that the same citizen, with the same clean record and character, can be legal in one state and a criminal the moment he crosses into another.

That is not the rule of law. That is a trap for honest people.

National reciprocity would cut through that maze. It would recognize a simple principle: Your right to carry should travel with you.

Twenty-nine states already recognize that citizens should not need government permission to carry. The Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision also affirmed that the Constitution protects the right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense rather than leaving it to the discretion of local officials.

Reciprocity would extend that logic across state lines.

So yes, the president’s words in Pennsylvania were encouraging. But encouragement is not law, and the bill remains stalled in the Senate. It will stay there unless the people who care about this issue make themselves heard.

I have often said that elections are only victories in individual battles. The fight for freedom continues long after the votes are counted.

This is one of those fights.

If you believe your God-given rights should not change the moment you cross a state line, say so. Call your senators. Talk to your neighbors. Make the national right to carry a question every candidate must answer.

Our rights are only as strong as our willingness to defend them.

The founders did their part. The question is whether we will do ours.