It may come as an unpleasant surprise for handgun owners that a change in state policy has taken away the right of some of them to conceal-carry their gun in public. What was perfectly acceptable a week ago might now be a misdemeanor crime.

Attorney General Kathleen Kane, recently and without fanfare, revoked statutory recognition of Pennsylvania’s reciprocal agreement with Utah, under which a Utah conceal-carry permit was valid in Pennsylvania, and a Pennsylvania permit was valid in Utah.

While the decision does not thwart the Second Amendment right for citizens to own and bear arms, it does substantially affect some gun owners, particularly those who travel from state to state; for them, Utah is known as the universal permit state because the majority of contiguous states recognize a Utah license to carry firearms. Advertisements regularly appear in this newspaper offering training and assistance to Pennsylvania gun owners seeking to obtain a Utah license.

A Pennsylvania resident who possesses a nonresident Utah conceal-carry license could drive all the way from Miami to Seattle with a loaded gun in the car — but no more. Now the gun must be unloaded, locked up and stashed in the trunk, even though the license indicates the gun’s owner is trained and qualified to carry a weapon and has cleared all security requirements to do so.

Under Pennsylvania law, anyone who has a permit from any state is free to carry a firearm, as long as: the other state provides a reciprocal privilege for individuals licensed to carry; and the attorney general has determined that the firearm laws of the other state are similar to the firearm laws of Pennsylvania.

Gov. Tom Corbett, Kane’s predecessor as attorney general, determined that Utah’s gun laws were substantially similar to Pennsylvania’s and established statutory recognition. Maybe not identical, but substantially similar — and that’s enough to justify a reciprocal agreement under the state statute.

But Kane has reversed that decision, even though neither state has enacted or amended any gun laws in recent years. Her only reason, spelled out in a May 6 letter to the Utah Department of Public Safety’s Bureau of Criminal Identification, is that Pennsylvania requires nonresident applicants to already possess a conceal-carry license from their home state, while Utah does not.

Kane’s decision is likely to be challenged in court. Gun-rights advocates argue that state law does not authorize the attorney general to rescind reciprocal agreements where no laws have changed in either reciprocal state.

It’s disturbing also that the incident continues a pattern by Kane to change the rules when she doesn’t personally agree with them. First was her refusal to defend the state’s ban on gay marriage, then her dismissal of a sting operation that ensnared four Democratic legislators accepting cash gifts without reporting them. Now this.

We take pride in being a nation of laws, not of men; but Kane’s style of administration essentially reverses the axiom. It’s not hard to envision a plethora of policy changes with every successive administration. That’s no way to run a state, or nation.

Perhaps the state Legislature should consider cutting the attorney general out of this equation and enact a law recognizing conceal-carry permits from any other state.