If you had to make a list of all the people in professions that you would implicitly trust with a firearm, “Secret Service Agent” would undoubtedly be right at the top.
As of 2017, the United States Secret Service employs approximately 3,200 special agents – not counting the 1,300 Uniformed Division officers and the more than 2,000 other specialized personnel working around the world today. The vast majority of them not only go through an intensive training regimen at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, but officers also participate in an additional 14-week special training course where they learn about police procedures, firearms and other topics, as well as an additional 18-week course for Special Agents.
All of this is to say that when a Secret Service Agent says that gun laws do NOT actually protect everyday citizens in the way that they’re supposed to, this is one opinion that you may want to sit up and pay attention to.
In a recent interview with America’s 1st Freedom, former Secret Service Agent Dan Bongino outlined his concerns with the effect that current gun laws have on everyday citizens across the United States. Despite the fact that former law enforcement officers like Secret Service Agents are legally authorized to carry a gun in heavily restricted places like New York City, Bongino says that he still actively worries about what might happen to him from a legal perspective if he ever had to defend himself while visiting.
Using his unique perspective, Bongino outlines the fact that even if someone meticulously researches the laws of any state or city that they pay a visit to, they may still get caught up in legal problems due to certain local laws. To his credit, Bongino has all of the necessary paperwork to carry a firearm essentially wherever he wants, but that would ultimately mean very little when it comes to avoiding legal or even administrative hassles in certain areas.
Bongino himself is a supporter of the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, which says that if you’re allowed to carry a gun in your home state you can do so in any of the other 49 states and still be subject to only your local rules and regulations. Essentially, if you wouldn’t get in trouble for how you use your firearm to defend yourself in your home state of Alabama, you wouldn’t get in trouble for doing the same thing in New York City, either. Bongino argues that the act itself would be helpful in terms of doing away with the “Draconian” laws that many of these locations carry.
However, this still wouldn’t totally eliminate what many perceive to be a real problem in terms of personal protection. Even if the Act were to pass, one would still have to be aware of local laws like those regarding magazine capacity restrictions that would still play a role in many areas. Never forget the fact that carrying your gun is one thing – actually using it is something else entirely depending on where you happen to be at the time.
~ Firearm Daily