Out-of-state gun carriers don’t need special treatment

IMAGINE THAT Georgia issued driver’s licenses to every 12-year-old in the state. No training; no test. Just bring your birth certificate to the DMV on your birthday, and get a license along with your lollipop. Obviously, those kids would only be allowed to drive in Georgia; other states would never allow them on their roads.

Now imagine what would happen if our legislators proposed a law to allow those untrained 12-year-olds to drive in South Carolina. There would be outrage — that is, if anyone took such a ridiculous proposal seriously.

Such a law would pose a danger to South Carolinians and, more significantly, could even lead to demands that all 12-year-olds in South Carolina should automatically be allowed to drive.

A similar type of fight is actually going on inside the State House now — and it’s not at all clear that lawmakers are going to stop the equivalent of untrained drivers.

At issue is South Carolina’s concealed weapons law, which allows people who pass a criminal background check and an eight-hour training class or its equivalent to carry a weapon in public. Currently, the only non-South Carolinians who can carry concealed weapons in our state are those who have a permit from one of the nine states with similar requirements. But South Carolinians can’t carry their guns in states whose residents aren’t allowed to carry guns here. So gun toters here want South Carolina to essentially allow anyone licensed in their home state to carry a gun here — even if their states have wide-open gun-carrying laws.

Fortunately, after the bill zoomed through the House without debate, the Senate added an obvious requirement: Anyone who wants to carry a gun in South Carolina has to pass a training course or else meet one of five alternative requirements that demonstrate that they know how to use a gun safely and responsibly, just as South Carolinians must do.

It’s hard to imagine how anyone could object to such a requirement. But last week, the House did. And the state’s largest pro-gun group, Grassroots Gun Rights South Carolina, has sent out “emergency alert” post cards to the state’s 39,000 concealed weapons permit holders, warning of murders, rapes and beatings if they don’t force the Senate to acquiesce.

We have no doubt that many South Carolina gun-carriers truly see this bill as simply a way to allow them to carry weapons in other states when they travel.

But let’s not kid ourselves about the ultimate effect if the Senate caves: Some gun enthusiasts will be back at the State House next year arguing that it makes no sense that South Carolinians should have to meet tougher requirements than Georgians to carry a gun in their own state. And what legislator who voted for this year’s change could possibly argue with that?

Gun enthusiasts have never liked the modest limitations in our state’s law. Every year, they’re back at the State House trying to chip away at our prohibitions on guns in elementary schools and bars and other requirements. Fortunately, the Legislature has generally stuck to the compromise it reached nearly a decade ago when it greatly liberalized the concealed weapons law. It should do the same this year. We don’t need to allow outsiders to carry concealed weapons in our state when they don’t even meet the standards South Carolinians must meet.