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This past week Kansas became the sixth state to align itself with something called the Constitutional Carry Movement which interprets the 2nd Amendment to mean that anyone can carry a concealed weapon without having to undergo any kind of licensing requirement at all. I can’t figure out exactly which Constitution is being referenced here, since the last time I looked at the 2008 Heller decision, it explicitly defined the 2nd Amendment as granting Americans the right to keep a gun in their homes. And while I’m no Constitutional scholar, I always thought that we understood the Constitution to mean what the Supreme Court said it meant, but I guess when it comes to guns, anyone’s opinion will trump a Supreme Court legal opinion every time.
On the other hand, the Constitution doesn’t necessarily trump the law of any given state, and if a particular state wants to grant its residents the right to carry around a gun without any licensing procedure at all, then whether such a law constitutes a constitutional endorsement of limitless CCW is rather moot. But what isn’t moot is the practical effect of such laws, both on folks who decide to go around armed, as well as other folks who don’t want to carry a weapon but happen to live in the same state.
