Date: Tue, 2 Apr 1996 09:31:44 -0500
Reply-To: [j--a] at [primenet.com]
From: [l--r--y] at [tahler.com] (by way of "James B. Andrews" <[j--a] at [primenet.com]>)
Subject: Why Liberals should support Concealed Carry

Forward from info.firearms.politics:

It's pretty obvious why conservatives, NRA members, and those afraid of violent
criminal attack would want concealed weapon permits made easier to get.
But there is a very good reason why liberals should support such a change
(besides the fact that under the current law, politically connected white
males are disproportionately the receivers of permits).

Why have 20 states so far taken away discretion from police chiefs and sheriffs
in the issuance of concealed weapon permits?  Because lots of law-abiding people
feel unsafe, and want to be able to defend themselves from violent criminal
attack.  It is certainly true that this surge of fear in the last five years
is not entirely rational.  Violent crime rates, while typically two to four
times the rates of the early 1960s, are still below the peaks of 1980 and
1981.  The perceived increase in violent crime rates is because the news
media have
dramatically increased their coverage of violent crime.

Columnist Mike Royko observed some years ago that when gun control
advocates talk  about the crime problem (most of which is in the inner
cities) in the hopes of scaring suburban America into supporting
restrictive gun laws, suburban Americans decide that there must be a
serious crime problem, and go buy guns.  The national news media, and most
of America's local newspapers (who obediently follow the line laid down by
the Washington Post and the New York times) have done the bidding of the
gun control advocates, and inadvertantly created an enormous demand for
concealed gun permits.

Concealed gun permits are really an admission of societal failure.  In 1955,
few people cared that sheriffs and police chiefs had unlimited discretion
to issue permits, because there wasn't enough crime to warrant carrying a
gun.  Today, many people are demanding a right to carry a gun because the
society has failed to keep them safe, or at least make them feel safe.

Most everyone agrees that in an ideal world, we would solve the underlying
causes of violent crime, instead of hiring more police officers and
building more prisons.  That deals with the problem of violent crime after
our society has produced violent criminals.  It would be better, most
everyone agrees, to not produce so many violent criminals.  We check the
picture tubes at the beginning of the TV assembly line,because it's cheaper
than throwing away a completed but non-functional TV at the end of the
assembly line.

But what are the underlying causes?  Our society is heavily divided about this.
Liberals have traditionally argued that poverty and racism cause crime,
though thisargument rings more and more hollow as two generations have
grown up under theaffirmative action welfare state, and the problem of
violence is far worse than it was before Brown v. Board of Education
(1954).

Conservatives decry the collapse of moral teaching and the traditional
family structure.  With some reluctance, some liberals are beginning to
admit that at least some aspects of the traditional family structure play a
part in raising civilized adults.

Today, neither side has enough power to force its view of "crime
prevention" on the society as a whole.  Sadly, even if either side were
given a free hand, it would be at least a generation before we would see if
the problem had really been solved or not.  What do we do in the meantime?

Americans are scared -- perhaps not entirely rationally, but scared nonetheless.
They want safety, and they aren't particularly picky about how they achieve
it.  Some liberals seem to think that AB 638 is the wrong solution -- that
it will delay the sort of structural reforms that they think are needed to
capitalism to make crime go away.  But as the recent election here in
California demonstrates, voters aren't leaning towards kinder and gentler
solutions to crime.  They voted 84-16 for initiatives that expanded the
death penalty to deal with the crime problem.  When these initiatives fail
to solve the violent crime problem, Californians will demand increasingly
stringent "law and order" solutions.

Our Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure
are rapidly evaporating in the federal courts because of the public demand
that the government "do something" about crime.  AB 638, to the extent that
it allows ordinary Californians to feel like they have a fighting chance
against violent crime, may reduce the demand for Draconian solutions.

I know that I am not alone.  I do not want to live in a police state.  I do
not want to see the guarantees of the Bill of Rights chipped away by fear.
But when the entire system of our government tells me that I am not allowed
to effectively defend myself against lethal attacks away from home, I will
insist that the government "do something" about crime.

Since there is no solution that will solve the root problem of violent
crime in less than a generation, and I have to live here in the meantime, I
have no choice but to demand the sort of short-sighted solutions that I
abhor: more police, more jails, more prisons, more executions, and more
police power.  If liberals don't want thissort of society (and I certainly
don't), they would be well-advised to support AB 638.

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