Does the Second Amendment provide a right to carry a gun?

The South King Fire and Rescue commissioners recently confronted the issue of whether Washington state law determines who can carry on SKFR property. Since the courts may eventually decide the issue of what the Second Amendment says on the subject of wearing guns in public, it is interesting to anticipate how the U.S. Supreme Court might interpret claims that the Constitution provides a right to carry a gun.

The court has already ruled that the right to keep and bear arms means that the federal government should enforce Second Amendment rights against state governments that unduly restrict people from exercising such rights. Keep in mind that bearing arms means to carry them about in public.

Nevertheless, the court commented in the landmark case of DC vs. Heller that states can impose reasonable restrictions on our firearms rights. Thus, a convicted felon or individual that has been adjudicated as a danger to self or others, for example, will be deprived of the right to own firearms.

Most states allow open carry. But openly carrying a gun can alarm some people. In the 1994 case of State vs. Spencer, a man was carrying an AK47 as he walked along Highway 99 just north of Federal Way. The Washington Court of Appeals held that the circumstances amounted to the crime of display with the intent to intimidate. So the court might rule that a consensus exists in favor of carrying concealed.

Every state except Illinois and Wisconsin has laws providing for some kind of concealed carry. This raises the issue of whether the court might find that a consensus has developed in favor of concealed carry.

Most states outlawed concealed carry in times past. The national trend toward concealed carry that now prevails in most states started in the 1970s. The Texas legislature only started allowing concealed carry in 1995, even though Texans had carried openly before the days of the Alamo. The fact that concealed carry is a relatively modern innovation may be a strong argument against concealed carry as an inalienable right that cannot be restricted by state governments.

One writer has suggested that many Southern states outlawed concealed carry because of the harm done to unsuspecting aggressors who were merely trying to avenge insults to their Southern sense of honor. The Southern code of honor looked back to the borderlands of Northern England and the Scottish Highlands where tolerating insults often resulted in brutal depredations.

The tradition of dueling was so ingrained in Southern culture that concealed firearms invited provocations that often resulted in fights with an unarmed assailant being shot, gutted or cudgeled to death during encounters that often began with an offer to engage in fisticuffs.

Citizens carrying concealed weapons were viewed as disreputable sneaks and villains during the early days of our republic. This may lead the court to decide that it is unlawful for the states to restrict the open bearing of arms, but that restrictions on concealed carry are a traditional exercise of the police power; i.e., within the reasonable authority of the states.

Observers have witnessed the spectacle of openly armed protestors descending on local Starbucks stores and, more recently, appearing sans shooting irons at a meeting of the South King Fire and Rescue board of commissioners. Openly wearing guns reminds the public that armed citizens deter violent criminals and that unexercised rights quickly wither on the vine. There may come a time when openly displaying guns becomes as natural as wearing a wristwatch. It all depends on knowing the time and the seasons.