Green Beret Congressman: Let SOF Veterans Carry Anywhere

Rep. Pat Harrigan (NC-10) introduced the Special Operations Forces Concealed Carry Act, extending federal concealed carry authority nationwide to active-duty and veteran special operations personnel who already meet—and exceed—their service's firearms training and marksmanship standards.

Read that again. Delta operators. SEAL Teams. Green Berets. Rangers. Men and women who spent years mastering weapons systems, rules of engagement, and split-second life-or-death decisions in places most Americans will never see on a map. They touch down at O'Hare, drive through D.C., walk through Los Angeles—and suddenly they need a local bureaucrat's permission slip to carry a pistol.

**This is not a policy gap. It's an embarrassment.**

Harrigan isn't a think-tank staffer with a clever idea. He's a former Army Special Forces officer who has been downrange. He knows exactly what these men and women sacrifice to earn that qualification—and he knows the standard they meet already blows past anything required by any civilian carry license in any state in the union.

The bill's logic tracks directly with the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act—LEOSA—which grants current and retired law enforcement officers nationwide concealed carry authority. SOF operators train harder, shoot more rounds, and operate under more complex and legally demanding rules of engagement than virtually any law enforcement officer in the country. There is no coherent public safety argument against extending the same federal recognition to them. None.

Anti-gun cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. have spent years engineering legal obstacle courses specifically designed to disarm law-abiding Americans. Those mazes don't distinguish between a felon and a Special Forces master sergeant. Harrigan's bill cuts straight through the wire.

**If we trust these warriors with a $400 million aircraft and a nuclear authorization code, the idea that they can't be trusted with a Glock in a restaurant is not a policy position—it's a punchline.**

No co-sponsors have been announced yet. The bill now heads to committee, where it will face the full bureaucratic weight of gun-control opposition trying to quietly smother it before it ever gets a vote.

That's exactly why the next 30 days matter more than the next 30 months. Co-sponsors signal momentum. Momentum forces votes. Votes force records—and records have a way of following politicians home.

Find your representative at house.gov. Call them. Demand they co-sponsor the Special Operations Forces Concealed Carry Act by name. The warriors who carried the flag into the hardest places on earth deserve to carry a firearm in their own country.

**Watch this one. If it dies in committee without a fight, you'll want to know exactly who let it happen—and so will every veteran in their district.**