South Carolina Passes Restaurant Carry

You can find the bill here, which was signed into law by Governor Nikki Haley this morning. It’s pretty much the basic law: you can carry in a restaurant, but you can’t drink, and restaurant owners can post prohibiting guns. The law also eases training requirements and some easements for transport.

Now if they’d just improve their reciprocity law to honor non-resident licenses of reciprocal states, we’d be set.

14 thoughts on “South Carolina Passes Restaurant Carry”

  1. Yeah they seem to be the only southern east coast state without any sort of reciprocity. It’s terrible.

  2. A few other cleanup items:
    – Currently carry in all public buildings is forbidden. This causes problems with things like restrooms at parks, the Charleston aquarium, etc.
    – All forms of permitless carry are banned. I would like to see permitless open carry (or Constitutional Carry) implemented. People should have an option to carry without a permission slip. Philosophically its an easy argument, but practically for the person who faces an unexpected but imminent threat (say, a jealous ex getting out of jail early) waiting 90+ days may be unacceptable.

  3. The changes I training may allow then to sign reciprocity agreements with more states, since the can only sign reciprocity agreements with states with training requirements that are equal to or greater than South Carolina’s. So don’t ever expect reciprocity with Pennsylvania.

    1. Yes… that’s a good point. It won’t help Pennsylvanians though, since they don’t accept non-resident licenses, and we don’t have any training requirement.

      1. And it’s unlikely PA’s current AG would sign any new reciprocity agreements.

        1. Not to defend her, but she did sign a reciprocity agreement with Maine. Though I only think she did that to deflect the possibility of a lawsuit for gutting a lot of our other reciprocity agreements.

  4. The reciprocity for non-resident permits (or lack thereof) is a significant problem for military spouses stationed in South Carolina. They have exemptions for active duty military who maintain residency in another state, but not for spouses.

  5. Last I knew, SC does allow loaded car carry in a glove box.

    I always thought lack of reciprocity was due to SC’s unique heritage of doing things their own way. One resident told me the unofficial state motto was “too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.”

    1. The SC legislature actually has very strong minority protections. The minority can force a supermajority (I think 3/5, poss 2/3) vote on any bill in the State Senate.

      The consequence to this is that even though the GOP has taken over control of both houses and the Governor’s mansion, a small Democratic minority can continue to drag their heels with any sort of carry reform. So all the old Jim Crow-era Democrat gun laws are retained by the Dems, or if they are modernized the Dems have lots of chances to slip poison pills in.

      Additionally, there is a strong class consciousness in SC. Always has been. So even the gun-rights friendlier GOP has concerns about “those people” carrying guns. Former Rep Jake Knotts is a great example.

      All of these factors combine for slow change.

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