Kentucky won. But the real warning sign is what's still sitting in Washington.

The bottom line

The Kentucky General Assembly overrode Gov. Andy Beshear’s vetoes of HB 78 and HB 312 on April 14, delivering two real, substantive Second Amendment wins. But what I keep coming back to is this: we have Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress, a Republican president, and a Supreme Court that has redrawn constitutional gun rights law twice in the last 15 years. We should be winning at the federal level too. We’re not. That’s not an accident.

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This article is based on analysis from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. This is commentary, not legal advice.

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What Kentucky actually did

HB 78 is Kentucky’s state-level version of the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The federal PLCAA, passed in 2005, shields firearms manufacturers, distributors, and dealers from civil liability when a third party criminally misuses their products. You cannot sue Glock because someone shot you with a Glock, for the same reason you cannot sue Nissan because a Nissan driver ran a red light and killed your family member. The manufacturer made a legal product that functioned as designed. Liability attaches to the person who misused it, not the entity that manufactured it.

Virginia’s legislature just passed HB21, which explicitly overrides PLCAA at the state level and opens Virginia’s gun industry to unlimited civil litigation from private citizens, local prosecutors, and the attorney general. Kentucky moved in exactly the opposite direction, codifying the PLCAA principle into state law so that it cannot be circumvented by a future hostile governor or legislature through state-level legal proceedings.

Beshear vetoed HB 78 on April 2, framing it as giving “immunity for gun dealers over the safety of the Commonwealth’s citizens.” He invoked the 2023 Louisville mass shooting and the five people killed there — a cynical rhetorical move that treats a liability shield for lawful commercial activity as though it were responsible for criminal violence. The Kentucky legislature wasn’t buying it. The veto override passed 80-19 in the House and 31-6 in the Senate. Because HB 78 included an emergency clause, it took effect immediately upon certification.

HB 312 addresses a federal inconsistency I’ve written about before in the context of Virginia’s under-21 purchase ban. Federal law currently prohibits federally licensed dealers from selling handguns to anyone under 21, even though adults 18 to 20 can legally possess handguns, can be drafted into military service, and can be issued automatic weapons by the U.S. government. HB 312 doesn’t override the federal purchase restriction — it can’t — but it authorizes the Kentucky State Police to issue provisional concealed carry licenses to adults 18 to 20. The logic is simple: if the state is going to recognize the right to carry, and if an 18-year-old can be handed a rifle by the Army, then an 18-year-old in Kentucky should be able to carry legally in their own state.

Beshear’s veto message on HB 312 argued that other age-based legal restrictions exist for young adults and that those minimums “protect our youth.” His veto was overridden 81-18 in the House and 28-9 in the Senate. The margins on both overrides suggest this was not a close call in the legislature.

The bigger picture Beshear represents

Kentucky having a Democrat governor in 2026 is itself a data point worth examining. Beshear is a Southern Democrat in a state Donald Trump won by roughly 26 points in 2024. He is, by national Democratic standards, relatively moderate — he ran on economic populism, coal country issues, and flood recovery. He is not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And he still vetoed both of these bills, reflexively, despite the obvious political risk in a state that red.

That tells you something about where the national Democratic Party has pushed its members. Even a red-state Democrat governor who needs to maintain at least some credibility with working-class voters in Eastern Kentucky felt he had to veto a PLCAA codification bill and a provisional carry license for 18-to-20-year-olds. The pressure from the national party on gun issues is strong enough that even Beshear couldn’t simply sign these and move on.

This is why Virginia is not an isolated case. Virginia’s gun control blitz under Spanberger didn’t happen because Virginians became dramatically more anti-gun. It happened because a Democrat won the governorship and the legislature flipped, and the national party immediately deployed its infrastructure and funding to push the most aggressive gun control package any state has passed in decades. The same infrastructure that pressured Beshear to veto HB 78 and HB 312 in Kentucky would be running Virginia’s playbook in any state where Democrats gain unified control.

What’s not happening in Washington

Rep. Thomas Massie testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee this week and laid out four legislative priorities: repeal the Gun-Free School Zone Act, fix the under-21 handgun purchase restriction, require the DOJ to publish NICS denial data by race, and pass the National Constitutional Carry Act. Any one of those would be a major win. None of them are moving.

The National Constitutional Carry Act (H.R. 645) has 64 co-sponsors. Sen. Mike Lee introduced the Senate companion in March 2026. The bill would extend permitless carry to all 50 states and territories, using McDonald v. City of Chicago’s incorporation of the Second Amendment against the states as its constitutional hook. Twenty-nine states have already enacted permitless carry laws. The federal bill would nationalize what a majority of states have already decided. It should be straightforward. It isn’t.

The reason isn’t procedure. Cloture and floor scheduling can be managed when leadership wants something to pass. The reason is that a meaningful segment of Republican leadership does not treat Second Amendment legislation as a real governing priority. They’ll campaign on it. They’ll show up at gun ranges for photos. They’ll tell you they’re fighting for your rights. But when it comes to actually scheduling floor time for the National Constitutional Carry Act or the GFSZA repeal, those priorities keep getting pushed back.

I’ve spoken with people who are relatively senior in Republican politics, and the bluntness of the attitude toward bills like Massie’s is striking. There’s a view among a portion of the Republican establishment that these are “fringe” priorities — that national constitutional carry is something gun enthusiasts want but that mainstream voters don’t care about. That framing is wrong on both the substance and the politics. Polling consistently shows majority support for the right to carry. The Overton window on gun rights has moved substantially over the past decade, driven by legal victories, state-level permitless carry expansion, and the cultural momentum of the 2A community. The people in leadership who still think of constitutional carry as a fringe position are operating on a decade-old mental model.

What the Kentucky win actually demonstrates

The veto override margins in Kentucky — 80-19 and 81-18 in the House, 31-6 and 28-9 in the Senate — show that when Republicans have a true supermajority and a governor who is politically exposed in a red state, the 2A agenda can move. Kentucky Republicans didn’t do anything courageous here. They did what their constituents sent them to do, with margins large enough that individual members faced almost no political risk in voting for the override.

The federal picture is different because the political incentive structure is different. Senate Republicans in purple states have real electoral reasons to be cautious about high-profile gun votes. But the National Constitutional Carry Act, the GFSZA repeal, and the under-21 purchase fix are not radioactive in the states where they matter. They are popular with the base, defensible on constitutional grounds, and supported by a decade of favorable court precedent.

Kentucky showed what’s possible when the people in power actually want to govern on this issue rather than just campaign on it. The gap between what Kentucky did in Frankfort on April 14 and what Congress is not doing in Washington is not a gap in political power. It’s a gap in will.

Trump’s three Supreme Court appointments produced Bruen, which is the most significant expansion of Second Amendment rights since Heller. That is a real, consequential achievement. But legislative wins require legislative action, and the people who need to take that action in the House and Senate have not done it. Kentucky is proof that the wins are achievable when the will is there. The question is whether the Republican Congress ever decides it actually wants them.

I think eventually the answer is yes. The 2A community is not shrinking. The legal framework after Bruen makes the constitutional arguments easier, not harder, to make. The state-level momentum is real. But eventually is not now, and now is when Virginia is burning.