Kyle Rittenhouse and Lax Gun Laws

Over the past 40 years, there has been a steady erosion of state gun laws regulating the carrying of guns, particularly concealed carry. These laws are generally divided into four categories: no-issue, may-issue, shall-issue, and permitless. The chart below summarizes the law in 1980 (on the left) and in 2020 (on the right) for the 50 states:

• With a no-issue law, the state prohibited carrying a gun in public and did not issue permits to the public. This is shown in maroon on the chart.
• May-issue states, shown in blue, have wide discretion as to whether a permit may be issued.
• Shall-issue states, shown in green, have limited discretion to deny the issuance of a permit to carry gun.
• In permitless carry states, shown in yellow, no permit is needed in order to carry a gun. In recent years, the NRA has been pushing the term “Constitutional Carry” to signify permitless carry, reflecting its theory that any limit on carrying a gun violates the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.

The chart reflects the trend towards weaker and weaker regulation of concealed carry. Everywhere there was a change in regulation, it was in the weaker direction.

In 1980, for instance, only one state—Vermont—permitted carrying a concealed gun without a permit. Today, Georgia, is on track to become the 25th state to allow concealed carry without a permit. On its website, the NRA celebrates this milestone, noting that once

Governor Kemp signs this legislation, Georgia will join Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming, in allowing law-abiding individuals to carry a concealed handgun without a government-issued permit.

Forty years ago, almost half the states, including Wisconsin, were no-issue states. Today, following a relentless campaign by the National Rifle Association, none are. Over the last four decades, many states made their concealed gun regulations more permissive; none moved in the opposite direction.

Wisconsin was part of this trend. In the mid 2000’s the Legislature overrode Governor Jim Doyle’s veto and established Wisconsin as a shall-issue state.

Openly carrying a gun, known as “open carry,” has also become much less regulated. According to a report from researchers at Johns Hopkins University, only seven states (California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York) and the District of Columbia restrict the open carry of hand guns, long guns, or both.

Wisconsin’s absence from this list helps explain why Kyle Rittenhouse was able to openly carry an assault rifle during the Kenosha protests leading to his shooting three people and killing two of them. Openly carrying the gun would have been illegal in his home state of Illinois.

The District of Columbia’s ban on open carry of weapons also helps explain why groups planning the January 6th insurgency stashed their guns outside the district. Without the ban, the subsequent riot at the capital could have been far more deadly.

Although open carry appears to be much less common than concealed carry, recent pro-Trump demonstrations in Michigan and Oregon suggests insurrectionists and other hate groups view open carry as a way to make their demonstration far more intimidating. Because it is legal, police are powerless to act until someone is shot. Weak laws encourage intimidation by these groups.

By the mid-2000s, Wisconsin was one of only six states that banned the concealed carry of guns. (The others were Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, and Nebraska.)  The graph below, based on FBI reports, compares the homicide rate in those six states to the overall average in 2006 and 2020. As noted earlier, all six states subsequently repealed their ban. By 2020, the average homicide rate in all six is no longer appreciably different from the overall rate in other states.

Gun use generates more gun use. After every mass shooting, sales of guns go up. In this the gun industry is unique. If a brand of automobile were known for getting into fatal crashes, its sales would likely collapse. By contrast, the more gun deaths there are, the greater the demand for guns.

The United States has become notorious for a homicide rate far higher than that of any other advanced nation. Certainly, one cause is a gun-ownership rate far above that of its peers.

However, the movement towards weaker state laws also seems to have led to more homicides. The next graph compares the average homicide rate in the 60 cities in states that have adopted the relatively strict “may-issue” policy to the 247 cities in “shall-issue” and “permitless carry” states. (Data based on FBI crime survey; not cities participate.)

Thus, the recent gutting of the rules about who can carry a gun also seem to have played a role in increasing gun deaths, by allowing individuals who have a history of acting violently to carry their firearms in public, by turning arguments into shooting and promoting a “shoot first” culture of violence, and by legalizing the presence of guns, thus complicating law enforcement’s response to potential threats.

Unfortunately, the current gun scene is anything but the “well regulated” one envisioned by the Second Amendment.