The multi-state permit
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The detail emerged from an argument John Kiriakou had been having with a friend about New York politics, and functions in his account as a fact that the friend's theory could not accommodate.

The warning

"I remember when I got my concealed carry permit," Kiriakou said, "they specifically warned me that the multi-state concealed carry permit is not recognised in New York, New Jersey or Maryland."

The instruction was correspondingly blunt: "So don't carry a concealed weapon in New York, New Jersey or Maryland." Kiriakou's response, as he reports it, was to accept the limit: "Okay, fine."

The point matters to the exchange because the friend's claim had been that New Yorkers are so frustrated at being unable to carry that the issue would swing a governor's race. Kiriakou treated the reciprocity rules as settled and unremarkable, a known condition of holding the permit, disclosed at the point of issue.

The question he cannot answer

Ted Rall then raised a puzzle Kiriakou readily conceded he had no answer to: why a jurisdiction should permit a handgun to be carried openly but not concealed, and what society gains either way.

"Yeah, that's a good question," Kiriakou said. "I don't know, to tell you the truth."

The videos

What he offered instead was an observation from social media, which he watches on the subject. "I do watch a lot of videos on TikTok, again last night, of guys wearing sidearms and then just standing in front of a police station with a gimbal recording, and the cops always lose their minds and come outside."

He reconstructed the standard confrontation: the man says he is practising his First Amendment freedoms and working on a story as an independent journalist; the officer objects that he is wearing a gun; the man replies that this is perfectly legal; and the encounter ends with the citizen telling the police "you're dismissed. You can go."

Kiriakou reports the genre without endorsing it, and the conversation turned immediately to a viewer question about Russia. His own position on the underlying right is stated elsewhere in the same broadcast by his co-host and left unchallenged: that neither man is arguing New Yorkers should be barred from carrying, only that the question does not decide elections.

See also

- The concealed carry advertisements
- Stefanik Will Not Be Governor
- Ted Rall
- John Kiriakou
