The State:

Four months isn’t enough time to get all the state’s business done.

When South Carolina lawmakers wrapped the 2017 legislative session in May, they had approved a plan to fix the state’s dilapidated roads, including a higher gas tax, and shored up the state’s pension system.

But some bills didn’t reach the finish line for one reason or another, so even before moving on to new business, the Legislature will have a lot to pick back up when they convene for the second half of the session in January.

Multiple bills affect South Carolinians’ ability to buy and carry firearms publicly. Last year, the S.C. House of Representatives approved two bills loosening the requirements for carrying a gun in the Palmetto State, only to see them get stuck in the state Senate.

One would allow anyone with an out-of-state gun permit to carry a concealed weapon in South Carolina as long as their state also recognizes S.C. carrying permits. The bill removes any requirement on the traveler to have passed a criminal background check or taken a firearm safety course. However, the traveler still must observe S.C. laws for carrying firearms while in the state.

The other bill would eliminate the need to have any permit to carry a weapon, either concealed or openly – a position proponents call “constitutional carry.”

Meanwhile, a Senate bill would do away with the so-called “Charleston loophole” by requiring a 28-day waiting period for a gun seller to complete a background check.

That loophole – a federal rule that allows a gun purchase to be completed if a background check takes longer than three days – allowed convicted Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof to purchase a handgun because a prior drug conviction was not reported to the seller within the three-day wait period. Another bill would require courts to speed up the reporting of criminal convictions for background checks.

Both of those bills remained in committee when the 2017 session came to an end.

The debate around all these bills started before this autumn’s mass shootings in Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs, Texas, and it’s unclear what effect those might have on S.C. lawmakers’ appetite for more gun legislation.

It remains sitting there, S.C. gun owners.  If the S.C. legislature doesn’t prioritize some form of open carry – with or without constitutional carry – it’s because they feel no pressure to prioritize it.

Events of recent months have given the progs a good excuse to delay this legislation.  Of course.  Not good in the sense that it has anything to do with open carry, but good in the sense that the optics are altered.