On Guns, Trump Not Showing Hypocrisy on States’ Rights

The idea of states’ rights is a convoluted one. It really depends on who you are and what you think as to whether it matters on any given issue. By and large, though, many people value states’ rights for the things they don’t want the federal government doing and oppose it on issues they want the feds involved in.

Since I largely want the federal government to be small enough to fill in office space in a D.C. strip mall, you can imagine where I fall on the issue.

For folks at the Daily Kos, though, they tend to think very differently. They want the federal government to do all the things, and at least one voice over there thinks Trump’s Second Amendment stance is hypocritical.

“Concealed carry reciprocity” is the latest example of President-elect Donald Trump’s shifting views on state rights. 

“I will protect the right of self-defense everywhere it is under siege, and I will sign concealed carry reciprocity. Your Second Amendment right does not end at the state line,” Trump said in a video.

If implemented, this would force states that don’t allow for concealed carry—i.e., carrying a firearm out of public view—to recognize permits from other states. That means a person from Arizona, which does not require a permit for concealed carry, could legally carry a hidden firearm in California, which requires a permit for concealed carry.

At the heart of Trump’s push for concealed-carry reciprocity is the idea that certain rights, like the right to bear arms, are so fundamental to American life that they should supersede state laws. But when it comes to, say, abortion? No, Trump feels very differently. For nearly half a century, abortion was constitutionally protected under Roe v. Wade, but now, due to the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, it’s been left up to the states. 

Unlike concealed carry, apparently.

Yeah, actually.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time going into the abortion thing because that’s not what we do here, but I’ll note that abortion is not once mentioned in the Constitution. 

On guns, though, things are different. The Second Amendment explicitly protects “the right to keep and bear arms.” Bearing arms, or carrying them with you, is right there in black and white. 

States have taken a dump on the Second Amendment for decades now, but it doesn’t change that the Second Amendment is explicit in what it protects. The 14th Amendment incorporated the rights protected in the Constitution so that states couldn’t circumvent those rights. As a result, the Second Amendment applies to states.

When a right is explicitly protected by the Constitution, states have no authority to undermine it. This is true of, say, the freedom of the press, where Florida can’t decide that Daily Kos writers need to undergo special training and get a license from the state before they can publish opinion pieces that would be read by people there just as the federal government can’t do any such thing.

I know it’s hard for people like this writer to understand, but gun rights are rights. The Second Amendment applies to all levels of the government whereas any right to have an abortion is something interpreted from other rights, and that’s at best. The Courts, however, disagreed in Dobbs and relegated it to the states because there is no explicit right to an abortion while there is one to carry guns.

You ain’t gotta like it. You’re just gonna have to learn to deal with it.