Constitutional carry now legal in South Carolina. What does that mean?
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BLUFFTON, S.C. (WSAV) — If you live in South Carolina and are 18 or older it just got easier for you to carry a loaded handgun in public. On Thursday, Gov. Henry McMaster signed the controversial constitutional carry bill into law.
“Just because you’re 18 and you don’t have a criminal record and you can go buy a gun, then you should be able to carry it. Those things are concerning. An 18-year-old carrying a firearm is concerning,” said Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner.
That new SC law gives the green light for anyone 18 or older and legally able to buy a handgun the right to carry it in public.
However, it doesn’t come without controversy and concern for both public safety and officer safety.
“If you’re in uniform or you’ve got a badge displayed and you’ve got a firearm. Again, it goes back to that confidence that at least that person is trained in, you know, how to deal and handle a firearm,” Tanner said. “But if you’ve got just ‘Joe Citizen,’ you know, in there, you know, with a gun strapped on, right now, what’s the proficiency test?”
However, some gun store owners and firearm instructors aren’t as concerned.
“We’ve had, you know, younger kids in our academy that we train and it’s not really about age, but about confidence,” said AJ Rossi. “You know, I’ve seen kids, even 16, 17, they’re out shooting and they have better firearms confidence than full grown adults. So it’s not really about age for us. It’s about how much time you actually spend training and how serious you take it.”
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Rossi is a firearm instructor and co-owner of Warrior Guns and Range in Hardeeville. He said that even though the barrier to carrying a handgun is gone, most people still want to be properly trained.
“So last year we have another training facility in Jacksonville and we’ve had constitutional carry over there and we’ve seen maybe a little bit of a dip in people actually signing up for classes,” Rossi said. “But the people still want to get training.”
Guns will still be banned in places like schools and courthouses. However, some police worry their officers might not know the ins and outs of the law. Had they been given more time they could train them for the many new changes.
“A gun could be on the dashboard of a car, it could be on the front seat, it could be basically, worn, anywhere in the vehicle,” Tanner said. “And, you know, it doesn’t give us the ability to check the firearm to see if the firearm is legal. You know, if it’s legal in the sense that it’s not a fully automatic or, you know, semiautomatic or whatever the firearm and also doesn’t give us the opportunity to check and see if a stolen.”
Even though constitutional carry is legal in South Carolina you can’t cross state lines with a loaded handgun. If you want to carry across state lines you’ll need a concealed weapons permit.
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