Washington Free Beacon reporter Stephen Gutowski appeared on Dana Loesch’s BlazeTV show Thursday night to discuss the passing of "constitutional carry" in Missouri.
The Missouri legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of "constitutional carry," or permitless carry, the Free Beacon reported earlier that day. Missouri became the 11th state to adopt such measures:
Missouri legislators bypassed the governor’s wishes and instituted the new gun-friendly law by a vote of 112-41 in the House of Representatives and 24-6 in the Senate. Under the law, anyone over 21 who can legally own a firearm may now legally carry a firearm. The move continues a nationwide trend towards what activists call "constitutional carry."
From the nation’s founding through 2002 Vermont was the only state that didn’t require a state-issued permit to carry a firearm. Alaska became the second state to adopt the policy in 2003. Over the last six years another nine states have followed suit, making it the hottest trend in state-level gun policy.
Calling the vote a major moment for her home state, Loesch praised it for recognizing "responsible citizens their right to carry firearms without unnecessary government regulatory burdens."
Loesch said that gun control groups had warned there would be violence and chaos if such constitutional carry laws were passed.
"This is a common argument that you get out of gun control advocates, that any pro-gun legislation that passes means that there’s going to be violence in the streets, it’s going to be like the Wild West," Gutowski said. "Of course, the thing about constitutional carry, it’s become very popular now ... Vermont’s been doing constitutional carry, some people call it Vermont carry, since the founding of the country. It’s not exactly a wasteland of violence up there."
Loesch asked Gutowski whether other states across the country would begin moving toward constitutional carry as well. He said it would continue being the trend, guessing another 10 states in the near future would adopt such laws.
"We have 11 now," he said. "You still have a lot of the deep-red states that haven’t moved towards this kind of carry policy, and I think a lot of them are ripe to ... There hasn’t been any sort of violence outbreaking because of this. An adult who can legally own and possess a firearm, can legally carry it, generally hasn’t led to any increase in violence. If anything, with the popularity of gun carry rising, we’ve seen a decrease in violent crime and gun murder over the last 20, 30 years."
Gutowski reports extensively on gun issues. He broke the story in May about journalist Katie Couric’s pro-gun-control documentary using manipulative editing in an apparent attempt to make gun rights advocates look foolish.