COLUMBIA — Charges for gun possession crimes pending when state law changed to allow permit-less carry two years ago will vanish after this week’s House vote.
The House voted unanimously Wednesday to override Gov. Henry McMaster’s veto of a bill dismissing charges for unlawful possession of a gun that were pending when the law changed. That was the last step needed for the bill to become law. The Senate agreed unanimously to do the same at the end of last year’s session.
The bill was meant to close a loophole in a 2024 law that allowed adults who could legally buy a handgun to carry it without a concealed weapon permit.
That law, which supporters titled the “S.C. Constitutional Carry/Second Amendment Preservation Act,” created a deadline of March 2029 for anyone convicted of unlawfully carrying a gun to apply for expungement. The law allows for the clearing of one charge per person.
That didn’t include pending charges.
It’s unfair to convict and sentence people for a crime that no longer exists, Sen. Deon Tedder, the bill’s primary sponsor, said previously. The Charleston Democrat voted against the law legalizing permit-less carry but said people shouldn’t be left in limbo.
The bill Tedder proposed will not automatically dismiss all gun charges. People charged with possession as part of a larger case, such as using a gun to commit another crime, are excluded from the blanket dismissals. That change came after opponents of the bill argued it might let violent offenders walk free.
Some prosecutors dropped charges on their own. But, as of the beginning of 2025, at least 200 people were still facing penalties for a crime that was no longer a crime, according to data from the Commission on Prosecution Coordination. The agency did not have updated numbers Thursday.
McMaster, a former state attorney general, generally opposes dismissing charges and regularly vetoes any bills that involve expungements. He would prefer to leave decisions about dismissing cases up to prosecutors, he wrote in a letter explaining his veto.
Those with charges pending still broke the law at the time, even if it has since changed, so if a prosecutor wants to continue with their case, they should have that chance, McMaster wrote.
“Some charges might warrant dismissal; other charges may warrant continued prosecution,” he wrote.
McMaster vetoed a similar bill in 2024 for the same reasons. Senators voted unanimously to override that veto as well, but the House didn’t take a vote. The bill died that year, which was the second of the two-year session, before Tedder reintroduced it in 2025.
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