Progress: Restaurant carry bill SB 1113 passes Senate

The Senate website is (obnoxiously) usually a day behind on bill status, but word is that SB 1113 passed yesterday. It's now headed for the House.

SB 1113 is what the hoplophobes have called the "guns in bars" bill and what the rest of us might as well call the "lunch at Chipotle" bill, allowing concealed-carry permit holders to carry in alcoholic beverage-selling restaurants so long as they do not consume alcoholic beverages, and placing the burden on restaurants that object to this to post conspicuous signs.

We can complain about open carry being left out--I carry openly to and from the range--and the provision prohibiting one from consuming any alcoholic beverages at a restaurant while carrying is overkill. (Drunkenness and having a glass of wine are two rather different things for those of us who weigh more than, say, eighty pounds.) But this is clear progress. The only real "hole" left in our right to carry in Arizona is the universities. (That is a major hole, meaning many pedestrian and cycle commuters, including most PhD students, are effectively prohibited from carrying on their way to and from work!)

According to Senate staffer Karen Winfield's e-mail announcement, the vote is as follows:

N ABOUD
Y AGUIRRE
N ALLEN C
Y ALLEN S
Y ALVAREZ
Y BURNS
N BURTON CAHILL
N CHEUVRONT
N GARCIA
Y GORMAN
Y GOULD
Y GRAY C
Y GRAY L
NV HALE
Y HARPER
Y HUPPENTHAL
N LANDRUM TAYLOR
Y LEFF
N LOPEZ
N MCCUNE DAVIS
Y MELVIN
N MIRANDA
Y NELSON
Y PATON
Y PEARCE R
Y PIERCE S
NV RIOS
N TIBSHRAENY
Y VERSCHOOR
Y WARING

Not exactly a party-line vote, showing that the Democrats are coming out of the Stone Age on RKBA, little by little. Note the "Yes" votes from Amanda Aguirre and Manny Alvarez. Republican RKBA supporters intending to vote in next year's primaries might also want to note the "No" votes from Jay Tibshraeny and Carolyn Allen.

I'd have liked to have seen how Rebecca Rios, reputedly sympathetic to last year's (failed) effort to legalize campus carry, would have voted. Gun ownership doesn't correspond precisely to a "yes" vote; Paula Aboud, who has publicly acknowledged having a CCW permit, voted "no." Always strange to see one voting against one's own rights. I'd put it between being a homosexual Republican and being a wealthy Socialist.

Why the University of Arizona cuts make sense

Being an ABD grad student I'm a little "bothered", so to speak, by the prospect of mandatory furloughs. The "deferred compensation" alternative presented by Ted Downing--who I miss having in the legislature--seems more sensible, but at the very least the policy could have been distributed differently between higher-paid employees, departmental staff, junior faculty, and grad students. The high-paid employees can take the hit, University departments are already running on skeleton crews and can't afford to have staffers taking days off, and five days' income is so much for junior faculty and grad students that it's sure to hurt morale. (Both will come to work anyway.) ASU has taken this into account. U of A charged forward clumsily.

Then again, the details haven't yet been sent to us, so maybe the plan isn't set in stone.

But that aside, the cuts make sense. University of Arizona President Robert Shelton sent an e-mail early last week presenting them in brief. To quote:

We will also be forced to eliminate or greatly reduce many of our outreach and community-based activities. This will result in:
a.. The suspension of three-quarters of University funding for UApresents.
b.. The current Flandrau Science Center facility, Planetarium and UA Mineral Museum will be closed to school groups and the public later this spring.
c.. The Arizona State Museum will be open to the public fewer days per week, and many outreach and educational activities, including public events, will be cancelled later this spring.
d.. The UA Museum of Art will be open fewer days per week, and will eliminate its engagement in university-level education as well as educational outreach.
e.. A significant portion of the UA's outreach and extension operations across the state will be suspended.
The new partnership creating the Colleges of Letters and Science allows us to reduce the number of academic colleges from 16 to 13, and we have previously announced the closing of University College, the functions of which are being absorbed in the new Colleges of Letters and Science.

Letters and Sciences makes sense from an intellectual perspective, although some toes will surely be stepped on. But as for (a) through (d): why were these things paid for by the State, anyway? To fund museums, UA Presents, etc--highbrow stuff, all--with the taxpayer dime is simple exploitation. It's the worst kind, too: literate sorts who prefer the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields to AC/DC can put together pretty-sounding albeit half-baked arguments for subsidizing their entertainment with far more skill than the AC/DC fan can bring to bear in telling them to go fuck themeselves. It isn't a fair fight. (Full disclosure: your narrator owns a copy of Back in Black but usually prefers Sir Neville Marriner's chamber orchestra.) Back at Tulane the classical-music concerts didn't come out of our tuition fee, but were financed by ticket sales--usually free or a small peppercorn for students--and donors in the community who valued the arts.

It should be that way at the University of Arizona, too, and this is the correct way to make it so. Did you know that UA Presents was subsidized? Neither did I. (Isn't government funding of colleges and universities insidious?) Now I do, and now I know the subsidy has gone away. And I'll pay more for the ticket, and perhaps start paying a fee to drop in at the museum. And some high-minded businessman who does think that artsy stuff should be more affordable than a Rolling Stones concert or a day at the ballpark (it is, but it's less popular anyway) or who wants to be a patron of the arts will make a donation or even establish an endowment. Bread-and-circuses stuff has the public's immediate interest and attention. Elimination of a support staff position in the Department of Transgendered Jewish Chicano Studies does not.

I suspect that the set of moaners and the set of donors will be largely exclusive. Belief that everything good is the government's responsibility pretty much absolves one of any duty to support anything privately. We're far more likely to see Jim Click's name on a plaque in the Arizona State Museum than we are to see the establishment of a Paula Aboud Chair for Study of the American Political Tradition. I will, however, contribute the dollar equivalent of 19.68 euros if that last one ever happens.

Inanity of the Day: Paula Aboud

I called and called and couldn't get a face-to-face meeting between Paula Aboud, "my" state senator, and SCCC, concerning last year's SB 1214. Now I know what I needed to do: I needed to stand outside her office, chant slogans, and wave signs for thirty days.

In today's Daily Wildcat:

"We must remember that this country was founded on civil disobedience for what we believe in," the Democrat said. "We need to be here for thirty days, picketing and rallying, and standing up.

"This will make a difference; I've seen it in other states - it will. This is how you get your rights, whether it's gay civil rights, black and white civil rights, this is what you do! You can stand up and be heard! Otherwise it's just numbers in a budget, or lines on a paper. Students need to stand up and say how this is going to impact them."

Sorry, dear:

1. Civil disobedience means willfully violating an unjust law. Demonstrations may be rude but they are certainly legal.


2. Rent seeking and standing up for one's rights are extremely different behavior, and to equate fighting a maximally 16% university budget cut with the push for equal rights for homosexuals or blacks is an insult to those who stood (and stand) for the latter two causes.


3. No, this is not what you do. What you do is lobby and and phone your representatives (unless, like Aboud, they only listen to yes-men) and 'blog and write the editor and submit guest opinions and run for office. A free press is the cornerstone of a Republic. Demonstrations are only in order if things are tremendously awry.

It's usually AZ House Republicans who say things so goofy as to make student reporters' clumsy editorializing--Carly Kennedy's "Senator Paula Aboud spoke of her immense support of the massive rally of students, and said protesting makes up the very foundation of our democracy"--unremarkable by comparison. ("immense...massive"?--will someone get the girl a thesaurus?) Thanks, Sen. Aboud for a refreshing change of pace. It's good to read of a Democrat say something silly for a change. Or not.

SB1214 is headed to the floor; will UA students, faculty, and staff win the right to self-defense?

Arizona has had a "shall issue" policy for issuance of CCW permits since 1994, but hearing it from some, you'd think that concealed carry is still a novelty, and that we simply don't know if people will start committing aggravated assault --or worse, shooting each other--left and right, if guns will "go off", etc.

The rhetoric we've been hearing about Senator Karen Johnson's SB1214, which would merely extend the right of CCW permit holders to allow carry at Arizona's state universities, has been, for the most part, a repeat of what we've heard every time firearms liberalization has been proposed since Florida didn't become the "Gunshine State" in the late 1980s: incredulity, fanciful scenarioes, and personal ignorance. European professors perhaps get a pass (with an admonishment tacked on: start learning about your host country, and reading Barbara Ehrenreich or Howard Zinn does not count!), but undergraduates who've for the most part lived in a concealed carry state since before they learned to read and faculty who've interacted peacefully with people packing heat in movie theaters, grocery stores, and plenty of stressful traffic encounters for over a decade have no excuse.

Perhaps this debate is even more obnoxious than usual; many of the "antis" don't even know what the bill does and talk about "kids" "running around" with guns as though SB1214 enables schoolchildren to carry. It doesn't even allow eighteen year old college students, who can at any time enlist in the military and be given responsibility for a burst-firing M16, to carry. All it does is to remove a nonsensical geographic restriction of the right to carry, allowing those of us who work or study (or, in my case, both) at a state university the to effectively defend ourselves against armed attackers at, to, and from University grounds.

The debate over firearms liberalization has been going on for over two decades, yet quite a few of our elected officials have been too busy to learn the basics. Take, for example, the discussion in the Democratic caucus:

Democratic Caucus Notes:

SB 1214 concealed weapons; school grounds
SPONSOR: JOHNSON JUD 2/25/2008 DPA (4-3-0-0)
(No: CHEUVRONT,HALE,MIRANDA)
RULES 3/10/2008 PFCA

Purpose (For more information see Fact Sheet): Allows a person with a
valid concealed carry weapons (CCW) permit to possess a concealed
firearm on the grounds of a community college or university.

[snipped RTS names--BSK]

Amanda Rohrkemper (Dem. Intern) explained the bill.

Sen. Cheuvront: They did make some good points how discipline could
really be increased if the teacher had a firearm in his/her possession.

Caucus chuckled.

Sen. Cheuvront: The people in support of this bill justify it by the
large amount of training. The problem is that they don't receive that
much training.

Sen. Aboud: I actually took two of these CCW courses, and I feel that at
least half the people don't have an adequate amount of gun knowledge.

Sen. Burton-Cahill: Maybe this is the time for us to increase the amount
of training for CCW holders. We should require more time out on the
range as well as in the classroom. In the last seven years, we've taken
the renewing training from four hours to two hours to absolutely
nothing. I'd like to propose a Floor Amendment that increases the
education for a CCW permit. It will also reinstate some sort of
training or testing to see whether additional training is needed.

Sen. Cheuvront: What kind of mental health is considered when issuing a
CCW permit?

Sen. Burton-Cahill: To that point, my father had several strokes last
fall and is now not permitted to drive. However, if he did have a CCW
permit, there would be nothing stopping him from continuing to hold it.

Amanda: To receive a CCW permit, a person must not suffer from a mental
illness. There are also other qualifications.

Sen. Cheuvront: Those are initial tests, but are they continually
checked?

Christina Estes-Werther (Research Staff): There is a criminal background
check taken every five years. I'd also like to mention that in
Republican Caucus, there was a concern that this bill does not address
university lockdown situations. Therefore, there may be a Floor
Amendment to address that.

Sen. Cheuvront: These people are not trained for this type of police
work.

Apparently Ken Cheuvront thinks self-defense is "police work", and moreover thinks aggravated assault is a laughing matter. Perhaps Cheuvront Wine and Cheese has the police hanging out like the bodyguard ninjas in Curse of the Golden Flower, ready to drop out of the rafters to defend against all threats, but they're not to be found in my lab, the Mountain Avenue bike path, dormitories, or sorority house lawns.

Aboud's remarks are a little more well-taken. Perhaps training could be better, although the "antis" haven't come forward with even anecdotes of irresponsible CCW holders missing their targets and doing more harm then good. Nonetheless, many (who seem to get their notions of police skill with firearms from movies) feel that it takes a policeman's training to effectively defend one's self with a gun, to the point where adding such a requirement may mean the difference between victory and defeat for the right of people like me to carry to and from their workplace. Ergo a floor amendment to be introduced by Karen Johnson later today when the bill gets its third read, requiring those who'd carry in campus buildings to pass the firing test required of police officers.

That's an easy compromise if there ever was one; let's hope it does the trick. I've been working hard for the past few weeks helping the Students for Concealed Carry in the uphill battle to educate our clueless peers and the even more clueless general public about SB1214; we're here to stay even if the bill stays. Check back for updates.