Permitless carry laws raise new dilemmas for officers
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Police saw Carmon Tussey walking briskly toward a crowded Louisville bar carrying an assault weapon.
With people running away, officers moved in, service weapons drawn. They put the 26-yearold in handcuffs and confiscated his semiautomatic gun. Tussey was later charged with terroristic threatening, wanton endangerment, and disorderly conduct, prosecutors said, and could face up to 20 years in prison.
His lawyer says he “was engaged in perfectly legal behavior” in the incident last year, raising a relatively new legal argument in the United States that now stands before the courts to settle.
That’s because Kentucky made it legal in 2019 to carry a gun in public without a permit, joining what is now a majority of states with similar laws.
Many celebrated the end of the bureaucracy erected around what they consider every American’s constitutional right to carry any firearm they want. But permitless carry laws have created a dilemma for officers working the streets: They now have to decide, sometimes in seconds, if someone with the right to carry a gun is a danger.
“Kentucky is one of the states that allows a citizen to ‘open carry’ — meaning it is perfectly legal to walk down a public street carrying a loaded gun out in the open,” said Tussey’s attorney, Greg Simms.
Louisville prosecutors say it was more than just the gun that led police to detain Tussey. The type of weapon, how he carried it, and where he was headed also mattered. A witness also told officers that Tussey was returning to the bar after a verbal altercation.
After he was detained, Tussey told police he “was returning to shoot” the people he fought with, according to the arrest citation. Those comments came later. Simms argued in court that he had given police no legal reason to take him into custody when they did.
The judge hasn’t been persuaded by that argument so far, saying in a preliminary ruling on evidence that police had other reasons to arrest Tussey. But Simms says he thinks he can persuade a jury that Tussey didn’t commit any crimes, in part because of Kentucky’s new law. His next hearing is Nov. 2.
Advocates say permitless carry makes people safer. Opponents say it makes it more dangerous for ordinary people, and for police officers.
“It’s no secret why so many law enforcement leaders are speaking out against permitless carry laws,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “Allowing anyone to carry a gun anywhere makes the job of a police officer harder and more dangerous.”
Gun violence is up nationwide. There have been 35,000 deaths in the United States so far this year, following 45,000 deaths in 2020 and the same in 2021.
About 79 percent of the killings in 2020 involved a firearm, the highest percentage since at least 1968.
Earlier this year, Republican Governor Eric Holcomb signed an Indiana law removing the permit requirement for carrying a handgun in public even though Indiana’s state police superintendent had weighed in against it. The new law took effect July 1.
“We’re still expected to enforce our laws and take those guns off the streets and make sure people that aren’t supposed to have them don’t,” Indiana State Police spokesman Captain Ron Galaviz said recently. “It’s just an extra couple of steps in that process.”
Under the new law, Galaviz said, officers can’t immediately grab a gun or ask to see a permit when they pull someone over.
Complaints about armed people in public settings can have a range of outcomes.
In Boise, Idaho, police got multiple “man with a gun” calls about 27-year-old Jacob Bergquist, who took a firearm to places they weren’t allowed, like a store, a hospital, and a mall, according to The Idaho Statesman.
Idaho passed permitless carry in 2016, but the state allows property owners to ban them in specific locations. Boise Police Chief Ryan Lee said his officers never had grounds to arrest Bergquist under Idaho law.
Lee made that comment after Bergquist entered the Boise Towne Square Mall and fatally shot a 26-year-old security guard and a man, and wounded four others.
Bergquist, who died after exchanging gunfire with police, promoted gun rights on a YouTube channel.
Shannon West, a training supervisor at the Kentucky Department of Criminal Justice Training, which trains some 300 recruits a year, said that when responding to an armed person in public, officers have “got a very quick decision to make ... as to whether or not to intervene, when to intervene, and how.”