The following op-ed is written by Caroline Light, a Senior Lecturer and Director of Women and Gender Studies at Harvard University. Caroline points to the ways in which the present US regime wants to change the Constitution to suit its ideology. It was first published in Teen Vogue.
Constitutional Carry Law Promoted by Donald Trump Would Allow People to Carry Guns Everywhere Without Permits
This op-ed explains the dangers of so-called Constitutional carry laws.
May 14, 2025
On January 21, the website for the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention went dark. Established by President Biden in 2023 as part of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the office represented the first federal effort to protect Americans from gun-related death and injury in the past 30 years. It made an impact: reducing the loopholes by which firearms can be distributed without background checks; providing support for communities and victims of gun violence; and educating the public on gun violence-prevention measures, like safe storage and emergency risk-protection orders. In 2024, firearm-related deaths and injuries dropped for the third year in a row.
Despite these accomplishments, gun violence recently surpassed auto accidents as the number one killer of American children, reminding us that we still have a long way to go. But as soon as President Trump took office this year, he effectively eliminated the Office of Gun Violence Prevention by an executive order entitled “Protecting Second Amendment Rights,” exalting “a right to keep and bear arms” as the most important right held by Americans. Among his priorities is “national reciprocity,” a policy that would require every state to respect the concealed carry eligibility standards of others, effectively allowing a person authorized to carry a concealed firearm in one state to carry legally in any other state.
Supporters of national reciprocity say that it will ensure consistency among state-based regulations. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), one of the bill’s cosponsors, has said it “ensures that law-abiding citizens can exercise their constitutional right to carry concealed firearms across state lines while respecting the laws of each state.”
Currently, there is significant state-to-state variation governing whether and how a person may carry a firearm into public space. For example, some states, like Massachusetts and New Jersey, require people to complete a background check and a safety-training course before being authorized to carry a concealed gun in public. On the other end of the regulatory spectrum are 29 states that have done away with any licensing or training requirements by implementing what is popularly known as “Constitutional,” or permitless, carry.
The regulatory differences among states correspond to vast differences in rates of firearm homicide, suicide, and injury. Perhaps not surprisingly, states with regulations and safety-training requirements experience significantly lower rates of firearm violence. Massachusetts and New Jersey have among the lowest rates of firearm-related death, with 3.7 and 4.6 gun deaths per 100,000 residents, respectively. But Mississippi, which implemented permitless open carry in 2013 and permitless concealed carry in 2016, experiences 29.4 gun deaths per 100,000 residents, according to CDC data published by the Pew Research Center.
In spite of the overwhelming data showing the deadly consequences of permitless carry, there is a bill making its way through the North Carolina legislature that, if adopted, would make NC the 30th state to eliminate gun permit regulations. The state’s existing laws are relatively permissive, allowing people over age 21 to apply for a permit to carry a concealed firearm after passing a gun-safety course. Currently, North Carolina’s gun-suicide rate is lower than the national average, but its gun-homicide rate is higher.
In an interview with local media, Rebecca Ceartas, executive director of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, warned that the new law will cost lives as “people as young as 18 years old, with no training and no background check, could carry a hidden loaded weapon in public.”
Regardless of the outcome in North Carolina, national reciprocity would require that every state honor the reckless standards of permitless carry. Trump has urged Congress to send such a bill to his desk, telling the audience at a 2024 campaign rally with the National Rifle Association that doing so would help Americans protect themselves against “barbaric” criminals and keep their families safe.
Beyond ignoring the data that show how gun regulations save lives, national reciprocity also amounts to a breathtaking breach of “states’ rights,” since it would force states with evidence-based regulations designed to preserve life to adopt the looser (or nonexistent) regulations of permitless carry states. This federal overreach is in stark contradiction to Republicans’ stated insistence on “states’ rights” for reproductive rights and voter protections.
Since about the mid 1970s, though, the Republican party has increasingly fallen in line with an extremist “gun rights” lobby that interprets any firearm regulation as a betrayal of the Second Amendment. The well-funded gun rights machine has launched a relentless disinformation campaign to convince Americans that civilian-owned guns are the best way to fight crime and that, in the now canonical words of former NRA frontman Wayne LaPierre, “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
But the overwhelming accumulation of empirical evidence shows otherwise. Public health experts and criminologists have shown that deregulating guns leads to more crime, more death, and more injury. National reciprocity means more firearms in public circulation — and in the hands of people who have not been vetted or trained. Instead of a common-sense way to normalize gun regulation across the states, national reciprocity is a race to the bottom, forcing all of us into a deadly “guns everywhere” dystopia.
Women Rising Radio presents an article from the Substack of Andra Watkins, the NYT best-selling author featured in our program #48. A survivor of televangelist Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority movement, Andra knows full well what the Christian nationalist movement of today means – for all of us. Her thoughts on Project 2025, a Christian nationalist manifesto, highlight the dangers of that religious campaign, to our democracy and political life.
Demons. Witchcraft. Demoncrats. Pagans. As 5 November approaches, Republicans are throwing these words around a lot more.
In my newsletter How Christian Nationalists Talk Amongst Themselves, I wrote about how Christian Nationalists view CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM as the One True Faith. Other Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Pagans, Agnostics, Atheists, Unitarians, Amish, Mennonite, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Sikhs, Orthodox faiths and more are deemed to be pagan false gods, demon gods, blasphemy, Satanic, and witchcraft.
Additional recent news items on this topic are HERE and HERE.
What could this talk of demons and witchcraft mean for YOU or someone you love?
Christian Nationalism indoctrinates people to beat themselves up for past failings and build treasure in a future heaven. In my youth, I was taught that living in the moment, being present, or emptying my mind of its worried hamster wheel was sinful. Church involvement, prayer, and Bible study were the only tools I needed to build a life to glorify the One True God.
In my thirties, I started practicing yoga. Every night after working my very stressful job, I came home, shut myself in my bedroom, and stretched and breathed through various poses. I couldn’t obsess about my work day when I was trying to balance on one foot or beat myself up about another failure while breathing in easy pose. For the first time in my life, I embraced something that helped me be in the moment.
In 2017, I started seeing a reiki healer after my family told me my incurable illness was God trying to get my attention, which led to a nervous breakdown.
If one does an internet search with the terms “yoga reiki book demons,” one will find pages of articles with titles like Yoga Opens Demonic Doors to Evil Spirits, I Was a New Age Healer; Then I Realized I Wasn’t the One Doing the Healing, and The Exorcism Files: True Stories of Demonic Possession.
My mother sent me one of these books with a plea to be open and let Jesus speak. This very poorly written screed admonished me that when I practiced yoga, I breathed in demons with every breath. Reiki invited even more demons into my body.
I guess I’m really good at hiding my demonic possession, because my head never spins around; I don’t spew pea soup-like substances; I’ve never used ecstatic voices like the New Apostolic Reformation charismatics who seize and foam at the mouth and handle snakes and speak in tongues. Seriously, I could not do this work today without my hard-won spiritual tools. Not because they provide some sort of mystical supernatural power, but because they help me relish every second of being alive. Yoga and Reiki have helped me recenter myself and draw from my own inner strength.
The significance is bigger than my personal story. If my Christian Nationalist mother could’ve forced me to stop practicing yoga and reiki, she would’ve. People in that world believe ANYTHING that is not of the Christian Nationalist One True God is demonic, Satanic, pagan witchcraft. They believe it is their One True God-given RIGHT to tell us how to think, to demand that we find solace only in their churches, their interpretations of the Bible, and their prayers.
Anyone who values their freedom to practice their faith, to practice no faith, to utilize secular therapy, or to use tools like yoga, reiki, tarot, astrology, psychics, past life regression and more should vote against Christian Nationalist Republicans.
It isn’t hyperbolic to make the following list of what Christian Nationalist Republicans could do to make these modalities illegal and/or impossible.
- Non-Christian religions could be declared demonic or outlawed as witchcraft. If this sounds insane, please go back to the beginning of this newsletter and read the excerpt from Mother Jones again.
- Psychics and astrologers could be tried for witchcraft. It wouldn’t be the first time. See the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials.
- Yoga studios and classes could be outlawed as witchcraft.
- Reiki and tarot practitioners could be fined and jailed.
- Christians who refuse to worship Christian Nationalist God could be accused of demon possession or witchcraft.