Constitutional Carry Comes Calling

Governor Shotgun wants to earn that title properly, Atlanta's gun crime problem be damned.

Three years ago, then-State Rep. Matt Gurtler, a North Georgia Republican, offered legislation to eliminate gun licensing in Georgia. The “constitutional carry” bill began in part with this statement:

“The mere potential to deprive someone of life, liberty, or property should never be considered a crime in a free and just society; Evil resides in the heart of the individual, not in material objects; and Since objects or instrumentalities in and of themselves are not dangerous or evil, in a free and just society, the civil government should not ban or restrict their possession or use.”

I leave the refutations of this sophomoric noise as an exercise for the reader.

Gurtler was considered an extremist nut even by Republican standards. Cut from the Ron Paul cloth, he regularly voted against … well, just about everything. Study committees. Budgets. Procedural motions. Speaker David Ralston got tired of Gurtler’s asshole politics and basically benched him after failing to unseat him with a challenger in 2018.

The constitutional carry bill Gurtler presented never got a hearing.

Gurtler called for gun laws to be suspended in 2020 during the state of emergency, arguing that "so many individuals need to be able to defend themselves and their families and their loved ones and their property," during the emergency. He then quit the legislature to run for Congress, managing to make a runoff despite associating publicly with white supremacists.

Today, Gurtler is chief of staff for Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie of the Christmas guns photo. And the white nationalist photographed with Gurtler, Chester Doles, is running for a county commission seat in Lumpkin County.

Because that’s where we are now.

Yesterday, Governor Brian Kemp essentially proposed the same legislation that Gurtler couldn’t get out of committee; the elimination of permits to carry guns in Georgia. Seven other states have similar laws, with Texas the most recent to adopt the policy. We are still short of specifics.

I have questions.

"Constitutional carry" as described in previous legislative attempts makes it a crime for a police officer to ask someone carrying a weapon if they have a valid permit or the legal right to carry. Still the case?

Operation Phoenix is a joint city-state-federal program meant to prioritize the surveillance and arrest of criminal suspects who are believed to be at the highest likelihood for committing violence. How would constitutional carry impact these and other similar law enforcement initiatives?

The state is considering a significant overhaul of its mental health laws, which come with additional powers of civil commitment. Will that MH law be subordinate to Constitutional Carry if a probate judge thinks someone shouldn't be able to go armed? Without licensing, how would a gun seller know if someone was legally barred from possessing a weapon, like someone who had been civilly committed to care?

What consideration, if any, will be made that squares the legal standard for fear for your life in a Stand Your Ground state with the legal problem that armed Black people are thought more terrifying than armed white people, in legislation adding to visible guns on the street?

I came to the announcement at Adventure Outdoors in Smyrna to ask those questions. I walked into the meeting room upstairs to find a couple hundred people and maybe five of them wearing masks. Greg Bluestein from the AJC was one of them. I cannot lie to you: I couldn’t bring myself to engage in an extended Q-and-A under those conditions. I’ve sent these questions to Cody Hall and await the results of a COVID-19 test.

I did ask the governor where he stands on the Buckhead disincorporation question. He said he’s still mulling it over and “keeping his powder dry.” That’s interesting. Buckhead cityhood proponents made a big deal about how Kemp’s floor leader Clint Dixon is a co-sponsor of the legislation.

On the surface, constitutional carry does almost nothing to Georgia gun laws, because the current state of the law is debauched.

You do not need a gun license to purchase a weapon in Georgia. You need merely pass a federal background check … if you bother to buy a gun from a licensed dealer and not from your buddy down the street or at a gun show. It is a felony to knowingly sell a gun to someone legally ineligible to possess one, but there is no legal requirement for someone to check in a private sale. No registration of gun ownership is required in Georgia.

Constitutional carry changes nothing about this.

It is perfectly legal to openly carry a weapon without a gun permit in Georgia, today, provided that you are legally permitted to possess a weapon and you are not in one of the very few places in Georgia where weapons are prohibited, like a federal building or park, or certain areas of school property, or a church that has not explicitly designated itself as gun-friendly.

Constitutional carry effectively means eliminating concealed carry permits — itself largely a trivial process with fees between $40 and $100 bucks or so.

The key change here involves enforcement. The law as it stands today prohibits police from detaining someone who is armed solely to determine if they have the legal right to carry a weapon. Suspicion of some other crime must prompt detention. But if you’re carrying a concealed weapon, the law currently obligates you to carry a gun license. Constitutional carry eliminates even that standard.

I’m legitimately torn.

On the one hand, Black people face enforcement disparities that this legislation might seemingly ameliorate. Police treat armed Black men as an immediate threat in ways that armed white men escape. It would eliminate a predicate for police interaction, which should help.

On the other hand, Atlanta has a very serious and growing gun violence problem. Atlanta’s public safety leaders are looking for ways to prevent the proliferation of firearms held illegally. Allowing for ubiquitous concealed carry seems fairly counterproductive, if the governor is serious about reducing street violence.

Neither issue matters for political purposes here. Constitutional carry is a naked appeal to the demands of the far right, who imagine a future in which they will have to use these guns to kill their political enemies and want as few legal barriers to that dream as possible.

I’m sure Matt Gurtler is laughing like hell today.