Let Them Carry: Twin Falls Proved the Case for Trusting the Trained
Last updated 06:46 AM EDT • Read time: 5m
On August 1, a gunman walked up to the drive-through window of an In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, Idaho, and opened fire. By the time it ended, three people were dead and seven wounded, and the shooter had put a bullet in himself rather than face the men who ran toward the noise instead of away from it. An armed bystander returned fire and drew the gunman's attention away from the restaurant. An off-duty state trooper inside exchanged fire through the drive-through window while getting employees out the back. A former police officer chased the sound of gunshots and took a wound for his trouble. Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks said their actions “drove the suspect from the scene and prevented further casualties.” I have spent time in rooms where seconds decide outcomes, first in the Marine Corps and later in executive protection, and I can tell you that Chief Hicks is not exaggerating. Response time is just a number on a dispatcher's log. The gunman doesn’t wait for it.
That is the argument for two bills sitting in Congress right now, and it is long past time both of them moved. The Special Operations Forces Concealed Carry Act, introduced in the House by Rep. Pat Harrigan and now in the Senate by Sen. Tim Sheehy, would extend nationwide concealed carry authority to qualified veterans of Army Special Forces, the 75th Ranger Regiment, Delta Force, Navy SEALs, and comparable units, the same authority federal law already grants retired police officers under the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act of 2004. And the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, H.R. 38, would let any American lawfully permitted to carry concealed in his home state do the same when he crosses into another state that allows its own residents to carry. Both bills rest on the same premise, one that a career in risk management has only reinforced for me: training and vetting matter more than geography, and a right that evaporates at a state line was never much of a right to begin with.
Start with the special operators because the case there is close to air-tight. Harrigan's bill, H.R. 8332, covers honorably discharged veterans from E-5 through O-10 with verified service in the Army's Special Forces, MARSOC, Air Force pararescue and special reconnaissance, and similar communities, granting permanent carry authority with no annual requalification. Sheehy's Senate version takes a stricter approach, requiring annual firearms qualification at the active-duty standard of the carrier's home state and a Justice Department certified “Concealed Carry Use of Force in Society” course before anyone gets the privilege. I hold FINRA licenses that force me to requalify on ethics and competence every few years whether I like it or not. I do not find annual requalification burdensome for a someone who is going to carry a firearm in public. What I find absurd is a legal framework that already trusts a retired beat cop with twenty years and a service pistol to carry concealed in all fifty states yet has no equivalent category for a Green Beret with a decade of direct-action deployments and a marksmanship record that would embarrass most police departments. The House bill's own findings note that these operators achieved Expert-level marksmanship and demonstrated a commitment to public service most of us only read about. Whichever version reaches the floor, the underlying logic holds. These are, to borrow a line the Marine Corps drilled into me, force multipliers, and pretending otherwise insults the men who earned the classification.
H.R. 38 is the broader and, frankly, more important bill, because it treats every law-abiding, background-checked citizen the way we already treat the special operator: as someone whose training and legal standing should not reset at the Nevada-California line. The bill has been sitting on the House Union Calendar since October, cleared committee, and gone precisely nowhere, which is what happens to popular legislation in a body more interested in messaging than governing. It preserves private property owners' right to bar firearms and leaves federal buildings, courthouses, and military installations off-limits, so nobody is walking a rifle into a Denny's against the owner's wishes. What it does is stop treating a concealed carry permit like a Blockbuster card that only works in the county where you rented it.
I understand the counterargument, and I have made a living giving expert testimony on the other side of arguments I found unpersuasive, so I will give this one its due. Critics worry that reciprocity effectively imports the easiest state's training standard into the strictest state's streets, and that a patchwork of forty-nine different qualification bars is not really a national standard at all. It is a fair point on paper. In practice, the Twin Falls shooting did not end because Idaho has generous permitting laws. It ended because a citizen and two off-duty and former officers reacted under fire that no amount of bureaucratic waiting period would have improved. Training, judgment, and the will to act are the variables that matter in the moment. State lines are not.
I coached high school hurdlers, and the thing you learn watching a fourteen-year-old clear a barrier for the first time is that hesitation is what causes the fall, not the obstacle itself. Congress has been hesitating over these bills for the better part of two years while the men and women who would benefit from them keep doing exactly what got them noticed in the first place: showing up when it counts. Pass the Special Operations Forces Concealed Carry Act. Pass H.R. 38. Stop asking Americans who have already proven they can be trusted with a firearm to prove it again every time they cross a bridge.
Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a BS from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, UPENN, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.