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.”[1]
The instruction was correspondingly blunt: “So don’t carry a concealed weapon in New York, New Jersey or Maryland.”[1] Kiriakou’s response, as he reports it, was to accept the limit: “Okay, fine.”[1]
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.[1][2]
“Yeah, that’s a good question,” Kiriakou said. “I don’t know, to tell you the truth.”[2]
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.”[2]
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.”[3]
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.