During remarks to American workers at a Mack Trucks facility in Macungie, Pa. on June 23, President Donald Trump reiterated his support for National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity and NRA.
The president singled out NRA President Bill Bachenberg for recognition and noted how he is working with NRA. President Trump pointed out, “The NRA… they’ve been with me right from the beginning.”
The president then asked those gathered what they thought of National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity, federal legislation to ensure a state Right-to-Carry permit is honored throughout the country, which elicited enthusiastic applause. President Trump then stated, “National Right-to-Carry, we’re working on it.”
Just as NRA has been with President Trump right from the beginning, the president has been right on National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity from the beginning. In a September 2015 policy paper, Trump explained,
A driver's license works in every state, so it's common sense that a concealed carry permit should work in every state. If we can do that for driving - which is a privilege, not a right - then surely we can do that for concealed carry, which is a right, not a privilege.
National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity shouldn’t be controversial. Moreover, it’s good politics.
After the NRA-supported victory in the U.S. Supreme Court case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), Right-to-Carry is the law of the land. The Court made clear that law-abiding Americans have a Right-to-Carry outside the home for self-defense and that governments can’t deny this right, either entirely or with the use of subjective permitting criteria. More recently, the U.S. Supreme Court reiterated its defense of the Right-to-Carry for self-defense in Wolford v. Lopez (2026), striking down a Hawaii law that made all private property open to the public gun-free zones by default.
Right-to-Carry is popular. A Marquette Law School poll from the summer of 2024 asked respondents,
In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that, subject to some restrictions, the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home. How much do you favor or oppose this decision?
An overwhelming 69-percent responded that they favored the ruling.
This popularity is why the Right-to-Carry was already the law in the vast majority of the country before Bruen. Prior to the Bruen decision, 42 states respected the Right-to-Carry.
It’s no wonder that the Right-to-Carry has flourished.
A 2023 Gallup poll showed that 64-percent of Americans believe homes with a firearm are safer. That same year, an NBC News poll found that more than half of American voters lived in gun-owning households – likely to be a severe undercount. A Pew Research Center survey from 2023 found that 72-percent of gun owners cited protection as a “major reason” they own a gun and 91-percent cited it as a “major” or “minor” reason.
And Americans do use firearms to defend themselves. Research on defensive gun uses estimates that Americans defend themselves using firearms several hundreds of thousands to millions of times each year.
It’s only logical for Americans to understand that the utility a firearm provides for self-defense extends outside the home.
Further, Right-to-Carry permit holders have proven themselves trustworthy. Examining permit revocation data for his annual “Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States” report, Economist John Lott determined, “Even given the low conviction rate for police, concealed carry permit holders are even more law-abiding than police.” In 2004, Congress enacted the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act, which wisely allows law enforcement officers and qualified retired law enforcement to carry throughout the country.
Today, most states allow visitors to carry in their jurisdictions. In fact, the majority of states (29) have Constitutional Carry, allowing visitors to carry without a permit.
In many ways, the success of Constitutional Carry is National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity’s best argument. Just as the Wild West scenarios predicted by gun control advocates at the outset of the Right-to-Carry movement in 1987 in Florida never materialized, recognizing law-abiding citizens’ Right-to-Carry without a permit hasn’t led to anarchy either.
With the Right-to-Carry now constitutional law and 29 Constitutional Carry states, the murder rate is at a 125-year low. U.S. Department of Justice statistics (2024) show the state with the lowest homicide rate, New Hampshire, and a majority of the top ten lowest have Constitutional Carry. The same goes for state rankings on violent crime, with Constitutional Carry Maine sneaking just past Constitutional Carry New Hampshire for the lowest violent crime rate.
As it turns out, dangerous criminals willing to misuse firearms to harm others never cared about gun control laws and prophylactic restrictions on the law-abiding only succeed in diminishing Constitutional rights and subjecting decent people to danger.
At this point, the Senate politics of National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity should be a no-brainer. With 29 Constitutional Carry states, there should be 58 Senate votes for reciprocity right off the bat. Those 58 Senators, along with those from another state that has outright recognition of carry permits would be enough to get past a Senate filibuster.
After all, supporting National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity could only enhance the rights of these senators’ own constituents by providing them with the same rights that their states already offer visitors. That’s, of course, if all these senators were concerned with serving their own constituents and not out of state anti-gun interests.
President Trump is right to emphasize National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity as a policy that’s time has come. NRA-ILA looks forward to continuing to work with President Trump to enact this commonsense measure.
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