On April 16, 2026, Pat Harrigan introduced H.R. 8332, the Special Operations Forces Concealed Carry Act.

Here is what it does. It takes the federal law that lets retired police officers carry a concealed handgun anywhere in the country — 18 U.S.C. 926C — and adds a new category of people to it: current and former special operations troops at pay grade E-5 and above. Army Special Forces, the 75th Ranger Regiment, Delta Force, Navy SEALs, and more.

Once you qualify, the authority is permanent and it is nationwide. Whatever your state decided about who may carry a hidden gun in public, and under what conditions, no longer applies to you.

Stars and Stripes described the effect plainly when it covered the bill on May 5: it would grant nationwide concealed-carry privileges, "effectively overriding state-level restrictions that can differ significantly from one jurisdiction to another."

Harrigan says the bill is modest:

"This legislation extends that same framework to both serving and veteran special operators. It doesn't create new rights or add new carve-outs."

That is not accurate about his own bill. Read it.

The part he left out

The law Harrigan is copying does not just hand retired officers a permanent right and walk away. It requires them to prove, every single year, that they can still shoot.

A retired officer carrying under that law has to hold a current annual firearms qualification certification, and must have it in their possession along with their photo ID whenever they're carrying. Miss the yearly requalification and the authority lapses.

Harrigan's bill deletes that requirement for his new category. This is not an interpretation — it is a section heading in the bill text:

"(1) No annual certification — An individual authorized to carry under this section as a qualified special operator shall not be subject to the annual firearms qualification requirement of subsection (d)(2)(B)."

And a few lines later:

"(D) No separate certification — No separate certification of firearms training is required for a qualified special operator."

So: a soldier who qualified Expert at 24 and left the Army at 26 would carry a concealed firearm in all fifty states at 60, at 70, at 80, having never been asked to demonstrate anything again. A retired police officer doing the same thing has to pass a test this year and every year.

That is the opposite of "the same framework." It is the framework with the safety check removed.

He isn't a bystander to the gun business. He's in it.

Most members of Congress who write gun bills are doing favors for an industry. Harrigan is the industry.

He co-owns the firearms companies ZRODelta, UnBrandedAR, and US Optics — businesses that make and sell handguns, rifles, optics and shooting accessories. We laid this out when we ranked the worst members of Congress on guns: he is not a politician who takes gun-lobby money, he is a manufacturer who got elected.

A federal law that expands who may carry a concealed handgun in every state, permanently, with no recurring training requirement, is a law that expands the market for concealed-carry handguns, holsters and optics. Harrigan's companies sell those. He wrote the bill.

There is a reason we have rules about this kind of thing. Which brings up the other part of his record.

In 2022, when Harrigan first ran for Congress as the owner of a gun manufacturer, he did not file the financial disclosure form the law required of him. WFAE reported that all sitting House members must file, along with candidates who have raised more than $5,000 — and Harrigan had raised nearly $340,000 by that June. The forms were due in May. He hadn't filed by late September, and couldn't be reached for comment.

The disclosure is the document that would have told voters exactly which gun companies he owned before they voted on whether to send him to Congress to write gun laws.

Who this lands on

North Carolina's 10th District is not exempt from what happens when guns are easier to carry and harder to track. Harrigan represents a state where gun violence kills roughly 1,800 people a year — a rate 27% higher than the national average.

And notice which way the preemption runs. If your state legislature decided that carrying a concealed handgun should require a permit, a background check, and a periodic demonstration that you can safely handle the weapon, this bill tells your state that its decision doesn't count for the people it covers. Not because those people are dangerous — most aren't — but because a member of Congress who profits from firearm sales decided your state's rules were an inconvenience.

Special operators earned enormous respect. Nobody disputes that. But respect is not a reason to write a law with a training exemption that the model law, written for police, deliberately does not have. If the argument is that these veterans are the best-trained shooters in America, then the annual check is a formality they'd pass easily — and there is no reason to strike it from the bill.

Unless the point was never the training.

Harrigan has been in Congress since January 2025. He is on the ballot again in November.

We deserve better.

Sources

• Bill would let special forces members carry concealed firearms nationwide, bypassing state gun limits — Linda F. Hersey, Stars and Stripes, May 5, 2026.
• H.R. 8332, Special Operations Forces Concealed Carry Act — full text, 119th Congress.