Sourcing

How facts are sourced

CarryShield has no opinions about the law. It reports what official sources say, links to them, and tells you when it was checked.

Only official sources

Every value is backed by at least one official source that was actually read:

State legislature statute pages and session laws
State attorney general, state police, department of public safety and licensing agency pages
State parks agencies
Federal .gov sources, court orders and the Federal Register

Advocacy groups, gun shops, blogs, forums, reciprocity aggregators, Wikipedia and law-firm sites are never used as sources.

No guessing

If a fact can't be confirmed from an official source, it is shown as Not yet verified. The app never treats an unverified fact as allowed or prohibited, and never fills a gap with an assumption. Where official sources disagree, the combination is marked unresolved rather than picking a side.

Dated and re-checked

Every fact records the day its source was read. Facts older than about 6 months are flagged May be outdated until they're re-verified. A weekly check of the Federal Register flags new ATF rules for review.

Laws that aren't in force

When a law has been enacted but isn't in effect yet, has been blocked by a court, or isn't being enforced, the fact says so next to its value.

No AI

CarryShield doesn't use AI to answer questions. Every answer comes from the dataset and a fixed set of rules you can read, the same way every time.

Every source, by state

CarryShield is not a government app and is not affiliated with any government agency. These are the official sources its facts come from, as of data revision 3. In the app and on each state page, every fact links to the specific source it relies on.

Corrections

If you find an error, send us the official source. Corrections are checked against the source and published in the next data update.