Kostas is Director of Legal Research and Education for the Second Amendment Foundation.
This week, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Gardner v. Maryland, a case concerning a woman who was arrested for carrying a firearm in Maryland without a license. She used it to deter an alleged criminal assault. Ms. Gardner did have a carry permit, but it was issued by her home state of Virginia. Maryland, however, does not honor that permit.
The same situation has befallen others as well. In 2022, Lloyd Muldrow, a Marine veteran and self-defense instructor, stopped an attack by an armed assailant in a Baltimore bar. For his bravery, he would later receive the Carnegie Medal, which recognizes those who perform extraordinary acts of heroism in civilian life. But before that recognition, he suffered the humiliation of arrest and prosecution solely because he carried a firearm in Maryland with a permit issued by Virginia, just like Ms. Gardner. As reported, “police thanked him—and then they arrested him.”
The experiences of Ms. Gardner, Mr. Muldrow, and others ensnared by these carry restrictions underscore that the issue of interstate carry rights is one that affects licensed carriers nationwide. Ms. Gardner, proceeding pro se, lost in Maryland’s state courts, and filed her petition with the Supreme Court. The Court then requested a response from Maryland, which was seen as a good initial sign and prompted my employer, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), to prepare an amicus brief. Ms. Gardner also received amicus support from a handful of US Senators, a collection of state Attorneys General, the Cato Institute, and the Heller Foundation. Pete Patterson of the esteemed Cooper & Kirk law firm also agreed to represent her and handled the preparation of her reply brief.
Unfortunately, all of that was not enough, and notwithstanding its request for a response from Maryland, the Supreme Court denied review without dissent. To be sure, “a denial of certiorari does not mean that the Court agrees with a lower-court decision or that the issue is not worthy of review.” Snope v. Brown, 145 S. Ct. 1534, 1535 (2025) (Kavanaugh, J., statement respecting denial of certiorari). But for the moment at least, the Supreme Court allows the idea that every individual state can choose to require its own permit to exercise the right to carry within its borders to remain.
Many states refuse to honor permits from any other state—not even those with similarly strict requirements. These include at least California, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. If you want to carry in all of those states, you must get all their individual permits, and renew them as they expire.
The processes in these states are extensive. California requires a sixteen-hour training course, a police interview, livescan fingerprinting, and sometimes even a psychological examination in certain counties. Combined, this can cost anywhere between $500 and $2,000, depending on the county, and the permit is only good for two years before needing to be renewed.[1]
These burdens on the right to carry cannot square with historical tradition. Before 1900, carrying a firearm openly usually did not require a permit or any other permission from the government. Concealed carry, on the other hand, was often restricted or banned entirely. Courts generally approved of this arrangement. See, e.g., Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 251 (1846).
But there was one frequent exception. Travelers from other states were often allowed to carry their firearms concealed. The historical tradition of these “traveler’s exception” laws is overwhelming. As the earliest colonial example, in 1686, the Province of East Jersey prohibited “privately” wearing various weapons but exempted “all strangers, travelling upon their lawful occasions thro’ this Province, behaving themselves peaceably.” 23 The Grants, Concessions, and Original Constitutions of the Province of New Jersey at 289-90 (1758).
These laws continued through the founding era, and just before the Civil War, at least five states had traveler’s exceptions written into their laws. More passed after the war as well, such as an 1867 Nevada law that barred concealed carry for everyone who was not a “peace officer or traveler.” 1867 Nev. Stat. 66. An 1864 California law did the same. 1863 Cal. Stat. 748.[2]
The exception for travelers was so widely accepted that future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote that, whether or not prohibitions on the concealed carry of weapons are constitutional, carry by travelers is generally a recognized right:
As the Constitution of the United States, and the constitutions of several of the states, in terms more or less comprehensive, declare the right of the people to keep and bear arms, it has been a subject of grave discussion, in some of the state courts, whether a statute prohibiting persons, when not on a journey, or as travellers, from wearing or carrying concealed weapons, be constitutional.
2 James Kent, Commentaries on American Law, 340 n.2 (O.W. Holmes, Jr. ed., 12th ed. 1873) (emphasis added).
History is clear, and it tells us that states must – at minimum – recognize carry permits issued by other states in line with the historical tradition established by the traveler’s exception laws under which visitors from other states received more legal “leeway” to carry than local residents did.
Unfortunately, for the time being, the Supreme Court will not intervene to confirm as much.
[1] All of this is surprisingly an improvement over the prior status quo, under which nonresidents had no right to carry at all. California did not recognize other states’ permits and also did not issue permits to nonresidents, so only residents of California had any pathway to carry in the state. That changed thanks to SAF’s preliminary injunction in Cal. Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. L.A. Cty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, 745 F. Supp. 3d 1037, 1071 (C.D. Cal. 2024), which forced the state to begin issuing permits to residents of other states. Other states that similarly refused to issue permits to nonresidents have since agreed to do so, with Hawaii becoming the most recent example.
[2] In his complaint for the now-settled case on Hawaii’s prior nonresident carry ban, Attorney Alan Beck compiled over 80 of these laws.
