The Arms Race at Home

July 17, 2013, The New York Times

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Amid all the furious debate generated by gun tragedies like the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida, citizens in too many states have been quietly, legally arming themselves at alarming rates that offer scant optimism for reining in the nation’s runaway gun culture.

Florida granted more than 173,000 new concealed-carry gun permits in the past year, even as the Trayvon Martin case proceeded — a 17 percent increase that is double the rate of five years ago and brought the total of gun-ready citizens in Florida to more than one million.

The trend was no less pronounced in a dozen other states that together issued more than a half-million permits in 2012 in a civilian armaments boom that shows little sign of abating, according to a survey in The Wall Street Journal. And while six states enacted tighter gun safety laws after the massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., politicians in 20 other states were successfully prodded by the gun lobby into loosening their concealed-carry laws, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Illinois, the last of the 50 states to ban concealed carry, ended its holdout this month after a Second Amendment court challenge. In an alarming turnabout, the Legislature enacted a law that sets no limit on the number of guns or ammunition anyone with a permit can carry. It also allows patrons to tote their weapons to restaurants where liquor sales make up no more than 50 percent of the establishment’s gross revenue (such are the nuances of supposedly safety-minded lawmakers).

The number of Americans with concealed-carry permits is now around eight million, according to a conservative estimate by the Government Accountability Office. Florida, a leader in the legislative mayhem, enacted the first Stand Your Ground law in 2005, setting a lethal precedent that figured in the Trayvon Martin case and tripled the rate of justifiable homicides in the state. More than 30 other states have followed suit, extending traditional self-defense doctrine into the streets, far beyond a gun owner’s home. On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. properly denounced these laws as senseless invitations to “sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods.”

Mississippi went even further in this year’s laissez-faire gun derby by enacting a law allowing adults to flaunt their weapons unconcealed in public without the need for a permit. The district attorney in Jackson and other law enforcement professionals are currently battling the law’s Wild West implications in court, asking what might happen when police officers responded to a nightclub disturbance involving cocky drinkers armed and ready to draw.

Congressional politicians display no concern for such questions as they cravenly uphold the gun lobby’s dogma and duck the public’s calls for nationwide gun safety. In a chilling commentary, the White House recently felt obliged to issue a guide advising houses of worship on how to prepare for such disasters as a mass shooting of congregants.

If the situation comes down to “run, hide or fight,” the guide suggests, “fire extinguishers or chairs” may have to be wielded against a gunman. The booklet is a pitiful reminder of how little political leaders have done to protect citizens from the nation’s raging gun culture.