Permit Permutations...

I'd like to talk about the concept of concealed-carry permits, and specifically why I think they're useless.

First off, there's the unconstitutional aspect - I feel strongly about the "shall not be infringed" part of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms". There's a good deal of debate over what, exactly, the founding fathers meant by "bear". Some scholars point to evidence that the phrase "bear arms" was limited only to military persons during the time of the Founding Fathers; others disagree. From reading their own words, though, it's pretty hard to think they could make statements such as:

No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms. — Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution, 1776.

or

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined or determined to commit crimes. Such laws only make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assassins; they serve to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. — Thomas Jefferson: 1764 Letter and speech from T. Jefferson quoting with approval an essay by Cesare Beccari.

or

A free people ought to be armed. — George Washington: Jan 14 1790, Boston Independent Chronicle.

if they had intended only the standing army to be allowed to carry arms.

That said, Jefferson's quote about laws forbidding the carriage of arms is central to my disagreement with the concept of requiring a permit to carry a weapon, concealed or otherwise. The people that will jump through the hoops to obtain a permit are exactly the kind of people that do not need to be permitted; that is to say they are the most law-abiding citizens to be found.

Study after study show that concealed permit holders commit far fewer crimes than the average citizen - for instance, David Kopel's study in 1996 pegged the number at a staggering 0.002% of FL permit holders. Do we infer from this that the granting of a permit to carry a concealed weapon somehow magically transforms sinners into saints? Occam's Razor would posit that it makes the most sense that folks who get permits are already extremely law-abiding.

Why, then, are permits necessary? If the people who apply for concealed permit applicants are the crème de la crème of honest citizens, isn't it redundant to ask they get the permits in the first place? Isn't it safe to assume that less-than-savory citizens wouldn't bother with the permit at all, and carry regardless? It's a given that criminals carry without regard for legalities and permits (and we'll discard the circular argument that by carrying without a permit one is automatically a criminal; we'll consider that strike to be null).

Isn't it far more likely that the reason for granting a permit to carry a concealed weapon is simply another roadblock to prevent people from taking charge of their own self-defense? The more onerous the restrictions are made, the less likely the average person is going to be to bother with the process. In a larger sense, this is borne out every time there's a natural or man-made tragedy in the US - one of the first things to happen in the wake of the LA riots was a large increase in gun sales. It was only in the wake of the lawlessness shown in LA in 1992 that folks realized their vulnerability; it took wide-scale destruction and terror to move folks to consider self-defense.

Now place roadblock after roadblock: Proficiency testing; written tests; letters of recommendation; classes to attend. All time-consuming, inconvenient, and expensive as well. All for what? A slip of paper granting permission from the government to participate in an activity that the government has already been told it cannot abridge...

One need look no further than the state of MA and the draconian measures it passed 10 years ago to see the chilling effect on gun ownership:

85% Decrease in licensed gun owners
=
67% INCREASE in homicide related firearm deaths since 1998.
236% INCREASE in assault related firearm hospital discharges since 1998.
331% INCREASE in firearm assault related emergency room visits since 1999.
590% INCREASE in firearm assault outpatient observations since 2001.

(courtesy of GOAL - Gun Owner's Action League). A quote comes to mind:

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. — Ayn Rand

Make it so hard that very few bother; then crack down on the very few...

On its face, the idea of requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon looks reasonable. Place simple, basic requirements to pass before the permit is issued, then grant once all requirements are met. What could be simpler? Well, as states like CA, MA, NJ, MD, etc. have shown, those "simple" requirements become not-so-simple over time as the desire to control grows. Even in "shall issue" states, onerous regulations such as requiring a license to purchase a handgun have wormed their way into the laws of the land.

How anyone can claim that this process is reasonable defies basic logic and reason. Simply put, we are either free or we are not. If we cannot be trusted with firearms, then we should not be trusted with kitchen knives, chainsaws, or toasters. All a firearm does, quite simply, is make the killing of another from a distance a little easier. Within contact distance, a knife is easily as deadly; clubs can be improvised from nearly limitless objects; one's own hands can kill through blunt trauma or suffocation.

Blaming the inanimate chunk of metal for a crime (gun crime. What a simply moronic term) removes blame from the person responsible. It makes it less likely we'll focus on the true problems behind interpersonal violence, hence perpetuating the cycle. Isn't it time we looked beyond the tool used, and focused on the mindset of the person misusing the tool? Can anyone give an honest, fact-based reason to believe that a simple slip of paper will prevent the tool from being misused?

I don't think so. Vermont and Alaska do not require these slips of paper, and yet these states are not awash in bloodshed and mayhem. In NH (and certainly other states), the process is so simple and inexpensive (fill in a single sheet of paper, pay $10 and wait a week) that they might as well not even bother. Yet my neighbor to the north enjoys a crime rate an order of magnitude lower than MA, which requires a permit to own any firearm and an act of G-d to get a permit to carry.

It's not about the gun. It's about the control. And the sooner we realize that, and start pushing back against the gun-grabbers and nanny-staters who would gladly assume said control, the better.

That is all.