Kansas eliminates State-wide concealed carry permit fees

Kansas eliminated all State-wide fees for concealed-carry permits in a rare bipartisan move.

The new Kansas law

Gov. Laura Kelly (D-Kansas) yesterday signed into law the House Substitute for Senate Bill 116. This measure eliminates several fees totaling $100 that the State Attorney General’s Office collects. The $32.50 fee a gun owner pays to his county sheriff, remains.

Rep. Rebecca Schmoe (R-Ottawa, Kansas) spoke for House Bill 2412, one day after the Nashville Incident. An alumna of the Covenant School, after opting for hormonal and surgical sexual reassignment, shot her way into the school. She killed three pupils and three staff (including the principal) before Metro Nashville police entered the school and killed her.

Rep. Schmoe, apparently undaunted, asked why people should have to pay to exercise a Constitutional right.

It means that you do believe in separate access to rights based upon income, and that low-income need not apply. I urge you to stand for the rights that we are granted — our natural, God-given rights.

Apparently Attorney General Kris Kobach agreed with that position:

One should not have to pay the state a fee in order to exercise a constitutional right. We don’t have to buy a license to exercise our right to speak here today. Church goers do not pay the state in order to attend church, and lawful gun owners shouldn’t have to pay for the privilege of bearing arms in a manner that is the most common way of carrying in the 21^st century.

Bipartisan (sort of) support

Even the House Democratic Floor Leader, Rep. Vic Miller (D-Topeka), agreed, for an interesting reason:

If they’re going to carry a weapon, I prefer they have the training.

Training in shooting and firearms safety, an eight-hour course, is available in Kansas from certified trainers. The training requirement still holds, but the $100 fee waiver would still make the process more affordable. But Rep. Miller might also be conceding that many will carry weapons, with or without a permit, so he wanted to see more people go through the permitting process.

Other Democrats hewed to the time-honored Democratic line that the only good relief from gun violence is gun control or even confiscation. Those words seem to have fallen on deaf ears. HB 22412 passed the House 91-33 on March 29, and then again, 86-37, after the substitution happened. The Senate passed the substituted measure 27-10, and Gov. Kelly signed it into law.

The National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) issued a statement praising the new law.

Reducing the fee ensures that the permit, and the benefits that it confers in exercising Second Amendment rights, are more accessible to law-abiding citizens of less financial means.

A Kansas concealed-carry permit is a powerful instrument for another reason. Holders can take advantage of a very large network of State having reciprocal permit-honoring agreements with Kansas.