CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATIONS

Three and a half years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protected the right of nearly every American citizen to publicly carry a handgun outside the home for the purpose of “self-defense.”[1] This “right” is often called the right “to public carry.”[2] The Court now has a case before it in which the claim is made that that right extends to a right to carry a concealed weapon onto private property that is “open to the public,” all without the property owner’s express permission.[3]

The Second Amendment reads, in its entirety, as follows:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The Fourteenth Amendment applies the Second Amendment (and most of the other Amendments in the Bill of Rights) to state governments.[4] 

Neither Amendment however touches legislation that would prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms onto privately owned property without the property owner’s express permission. For that matter, neither Amendment touches legislation that would prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms by anyone, anywhere. The Court said so in that case it decided three and a half years ago.[5]

The states have the power, of course, to license the concealed carry of handguns to those individuals who may need to carry concealed handguns. With that power, the states would also be free to restrict the exercise of those licenses in any manner they might choose to do so. Thus, in answer to the question now before the Supreme Court, the states are free to prohibit the exercise of concealed carry licenses on private property “open to the public,” unless the licensee has the express consent of the property owner to exercise that license on his or her property.

The gun control case now on the Court’s docket should be an easy one to decide. The right to publicly carry a handgun outside the home, thought to be protected by the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, does not include any “Constitutional right” to carry a “concealed” weapon. Neither the language, nor the history of the Second Amendment can be stretched that far. “Public carry” is not the same as “concealed carry.”

/s/ Dan Rhea

[1] New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 33 (2022).

[2] Ibid.

[3] See Wolford v. Lopez, Sup.Ct. docket number 24-1046.

[4] U.S. Const., Amendment XIV, §1; McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010).

[5] See New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 33 (2022).