NRA very successful at ending laws requiring permits for concealed guns. 3 more states ponder this

Thanks to NRA pressure, 13 of the 14 states colored green have passed laws that eliminated their required permits for carrying a concealed firearm. The 14th, Vermont, has never required permits. As you can see by comparing this map with the one in the text below, laws governing the issuance of concealed-carry permits have changed dramatically in the past 33 years. It was encouraging last week to see the U.S. House Judiciary Committee pass and send a gun reform bill [1]to the full House for the first time in 23 years. That bill[2] would require what 11 states and the District of Columbia already do: a federal background check on everyone who obtains a firearm from any source, whether it is purchased, gifted, or borrowed, with narrow exceptions. It will no doubt pass the House, since it has 231 co-sponsors, including five Republicans. But it has zero chance of clearing the Senate, given the Republican majority there. In 1986, 15 states would not issue a concealed handgun permit to anyone except law enforcement, and 25 others only did so under strict rules that kept most people from obtaining one. Only a single state, Vermont, required no permit. As you can see by comparing this map with the one that leads this post, today 14 states require no permit and no state refuses to issue a permit to all comers.  On the discouraging side is the decade-long campaign pushing other states to pass a different kind of change in gun laws. Advocates of loosening gun restrictions call it “constitutional carry.” And while the particulars differ slightly from state to state in the 14 that have passed such laws, the essence everywhere is to allow anyone who can legally purchase a firearm to legally carry it, openly or concealed, virtually anywhere they wish. Some of these states already allow

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