I am firearms attorney Gilbert Ambler, and I'm back today with a very exciting topic, which is the idea that we might actually see national reciprocity. Today. I want to talk about if we get national reciprocity, in what form is it going to be, what's it going to look like? And I also want to talk about how anti-gun states. I'm looking at you, Maryland, California, Washington, New Jersey, New York. I want to talk about how those anti-gun states, the states that already in the past after the Broune decision passed, Broune response bills. What bills would they pass in response to national reciprocity and a national ability to carry a firearm? And I'll tell you right now, there is a national ability to carry a firearm, but only for two types of people. Number one, those that are willing to carry illegally. And number two, certain qualified law enforcement officers.
There's some exceptions out there. I think it's high time. I think it is absolutely high time that you and me average civilians should get the right to carry a firearm in all 50 states. I think this is what the Constitution protects, and I think it has been a long overdue, and I think it's ridiculous that if I want to carry in other states, I've got to worry about where the licenses I currently have are recognized and I've got to go get licenses from multiple states in order to carry elsewhere. Crazy. We need to put an end to this. And Donald J. Trump has been talking about the fact that he would pass national reciprocity if it's presented to him. And I'll tell you, my inbox has been blowing up. People have been calling me, they've been texting me. They want to know how is this going to work.
So before we dive into this, if you have not yet hit that subscribe button, what are you waiting for? Hit the subscribe button. Like comment with your thoughts, share with your friends. That way you and your friends can keep getting this important Second Amendment related content. Alright, when we talk about national reciprocity, I think there are three forms that it could take where the federal government, if legislation is passed and Donald Trump says he will sign it, there's three forms that they might look at in how they could effectuate nationwide carry. The first form would be nationwide constitutional carry. Meaning as long as you're eligible to possess a firearm, you don't have to get any other license or go get any permit. You can just start carrying in all 50 states. It is possible that the federal government could do this. In fact, I think that's what the Second Amendment demands.
I don't think this is the most likely path, and I don't think it's the most likely path for a couple of reasons. First, the United States Supreme Court has already suggested in the Broune decision that shall issue licensing is a permissible, well, I think it's an infringement, but that it is constitutional to have shall issue licensing for concealed carry. And because the United States Supreme Court has suggested that, I think what you will find is that there's probably not enough support in the Senate to actually pass national constitutional carry where there is no license or permit whatsoever required. Now, I do think that the federal government has the power to do that. They have the power to do that, even if it's constitutional right now, for states to require some form of training and do shall issue licensing, the federal government has the power to statutorily override that due to the concept behind the supremacy clause and preemption.
The concept here is that when the federal government writes law about a subject and the federal government intends to override contrary state laws, the supremacy clause of the United States Constitution says when there's a conflict between the two, a conflict between federal law and state law, the federal law is going to win. So it is possible that we could get federal constitutional carry. Again, I don't know that the Senate is going to have the stomach for that going the other direction. There might be senators that want the idea that there could be a federal license that you could obtain, meaning the federal government would set qualifications and say, go get this many hours of training from this type of instructor and then you can carry in all 50 states. I think that there's going to be a lot of pushback from conservative senators and conservative legislators in both the House and the Senate.
If this is the direction that it takes. I think the concern is going to be once you allow the federal government to take over this licensing, future federal government, future legislation might amend the law and make it unobtainable. So for example, if it's passed today and it says, Hey, you need eight hours of training, who's to say a different Congress doesn't come into office in the future and require 140 hours of training and make it unobtainable? And so I don't know that that's the best solution for national reciprocity. I think the best solution is to treat your license to carry the way we treat a marriage license or a driver's license, which is going to be for the federal government to have forced reciprocity. Now, currently, it's not the federal government necessarily making every state recognize every other state's driver's license, but we do do this with marriage licenses.
Let's force states to recognize other state's licenses or permits to carry. Let's have four reciprocity where if you obtain a license from your home state, every other state is forced to recognize it. And of course the benefit here is that because of the Broune decision, all 50 states are shell issue states. Meaning as long as you don't have things on your record that preclude you from obtaining a license to carry in all 50 states, you can go out and get a license to carry. And once you have it, we should be forcing other states to recognize it. I think that this is the most likely form that we would see national reciprocity take. I think it's the most likely avenue that we could get this done and frankly makes it so you get your license in your home state, you can carry in any other state.
That would be wonderful. It would be huge, very much as I said, long overdue. I shouldn't have to worry if I want to take a vacation up in New York, then I'm going to run a foul of the law. Now if they were to do something like that, what are these anti-gun jurisdictions going to do in response? And I think they're going to turn to the idea behind the current federal Gun-Free School Zones Act. Because the idea behind the current federal gun-Free School Zones Act establishes a thousand foot zone around schools where you can't have firearms. Now, there are exceptions, the exception, the big exception is if you have a license or permit to carry issued by the state that the school is in. But what I think we're going to see is I think we're going to see anti-gun states take that gun-free zone surrounding a sensitive location, what they're going to call a sensitive location.
And I think they're going to try to expound upon that. I think they're going to try to expand that so that they'll come up with all sorts of areas that are sensitive locations. So they'll say courthouses are sensitive locations. Post offices are sensitive locations, schools are sensitive. Locations you go on, airports are sensitive places, bus terminals are sensitive locations. They'll name all these locations that they believe are sensitive. They've already kind of done this in response to Broune, but I think they'll take it a step further and they'll create thousand foot zones or some other arbitrary zone around those locations where they're going to try to deny firearms. And in doing so, they will make it a practical impossibility to carry through their state. So yes, New York might be forced to recognize an out-of-state, my Virginia concealed handgun permit, but they're going to make it practically impossible for me to drive through New York. So what's going to happen if it goes this way? It means we need the Supreme Court to take up one of these sensitive location restriction cases. The Supreme Court has got to stop what has been going on because it's lower courts sort of thumbing their nose at Bruin when they're just labeling all sorts of locations as sensitive and thereby denying people their right to carry firearms. If you enjoyed this content, go ahead, hit that subscribe button, comment with your thoughts. Until next time.
Credit: Gilbert Ambler