Why National Reciprocity Is Needed

National reciprocity is finally going somewhere in the House of Representatives, and while it might struggle in the Senate, there are ways to address that.

What matters more is that it’s at least advancing. It needs to advance. In fact, it needs to become law.

A lot of people are doing their typical act of screaming and carrying on, claiming that the law would empower criminals and make everyone less safe. That’s absolute nonsense and we all know it.

Now, John Lott is addressing the hysterics in a piece he wrote for our sister site, Townhall.

The two groups that benefit the most from carrying guns are physically weaker people (women and the elderly) and the likeliest victims of crime (poor blacks in high-crime urban areas). These are also the groups that have seen the largest percentage increases in concealed handgun permits over the last decade (2015 to 2024), with concealed handgun permits for women increasing 112% faster than for men and permits for blacks increasing 284% faster than for whites.

Unfortunately, real life isn’t like the movies, where one woman can knock out and overpower several well-trained men. Even well-trained women often struggle to defend themselves against much larger and stronger men. Men also tend to be faster runners. 

A firearm represents a much more significant change in a woman’s ability to defend herself. Men can readily hurt women without a gun, and if a woman is already in physical contact with the attacker so that he can take away their gun, they are already in trouble.

The peer-reviewed research by one of us shows that murder rates decline when people carry concealed handguns, be they men or women. But a woman holding a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3 to 4 times more than a man doing the same.

That last bit is particularly powerful. The truth is that women are vulnerable. While most homicide victims do tend to be men, that’s largely because of gang activity and gang honor culture BS. Remove those from the equation, and you have pretty much all of the women who are victims of homicide. Few of them have any means of self-defense remotely available to them beyond a firearm.

And, as we’ve pointed out, people’s rights don’t end at the state line.

But let’s also add in the recent information from Philadelphia, where concealed carry permits have been issued at a drastically increased rate since 2021, and homicides have fallen 28 percent this year compared to 2024.

That’s not gender specific, as Lott describes above, but it’s still more evidence that concealed carry, at a minimum, doesn’t make us less safe. In fact, it suggests quite the opposite.

Even if it didn’t suggest that, though, the fact that the homicide rate didn’t have a corresponding spike tells us that the usual suspects’ wailing and gnashing of teeth is nothing more than theaterics.

And tourists are potential targets almost anywhere they go, simply because they likely have extra money on their person–it’s not like their bank is local, after all–and may well have expensive items like photography equipment handy. They shouldn’t be put in that position when they could carry a firearm.

So yeah, it needs to pass.