“To enforce the rights protected by the Second and Fourteenth Amendments against the States.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section sets forth seven congressional findings affirming the Second Amendment's protection of the individual right to keep and bear arms, including in public for self-defense, as confirmed by Supreme Court decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), and New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen (2022), and declaring that certain state and local gun control laws—such as the criminalization of peaceable public firearms carry—are inconsistent with this right and the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.
This section revises section 927 of title 18, United States Code—from a provision preserving state firearms laws absent direct federal conflict—to prohibit any state or political subdivision, including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and U.S. possessions (not the Canal Zone), from imposing criminal or civil penalties or indirect limits (e.g., financial or other barriers to entry) on public carry of firearms by U.S. citizens who are residents or nonresidents otherwise eligible to possess firearms under state and federal law. It declares any such state or local statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage void and of no force or effect. "Public" is defined to include places held open to the public regardless of ownership—except privately owned locations with clear, conspicuous prohibitions by the owner and places with state-mandated firearms screening. (Thus, eligible U.S. citizens have a federal right to carry firearms in most public places nationwide, subject only to those exceptions.) The section also makes a conforming change to the table of sections for chapter 44 of title 18.