The Daily Star gets self-defense wrong

From the Daily Star's editorial lamenting the legalization of CCW without a permit:

Some supporters even argue that the more people who carry firearms, the safer we will all be from robberies, assaults and lunatic shooting sprees.

We think not. We suspect a bunch of armed citizens trying to intervene in such incidents will be more likely to endanger innocent, unarmed citizens than to prevail over the bad guys.

From a certain perspective--that of someone who understands this argument in favor of liberalized carry--the Star just characterized my defense of myself as an "intervention" that will endanger third parties.

Of course, the Star isn't writing from that perspective. Perhaps nobody made it clear to the editors that the reason safety is expected to increase is that that rapist, muggers, and the like will feel more at risk of being shot by their prospective victims, with little open indication of who the "safe" targets are. Perhaps it would take the Ludovico treatment to really get this across. Whether or not concealed carry does make third parties significantly safer is still an open question, but we know at least that it does not make people less safe.

This isn't to say that more people coming to the aid of others is a bad thing. The Star seems to think so, and to think it is dangerous. Reality has never been a strong influence on people with beliefs like that: we are over 20 years into America's successful experiment with CCW, and evidence that aiding others is a dangerous activity has not emerged.

Speaking of reality not being a deterrent, why is the Star still calling the borderline non-entity known as the Brady Campaign?

---

On the topic of concealed carry: The one concern I've had about this measure is that it takes away the "carrot" that induced a significant minority of Arizona firearms owners to undergo some sort of formal training. I do not doubt that most can shoot adequately at a reasonable distance and that even more can safely "handle" firearms. I would like to think that they familiarize themselves with the law, as well, but (although it has not manifested itself as a major problem) my "anecdotal" experience says that isn't the case. I get worried even more because libertarians and right-wingers are probably more likely to carry than moderates or lefties, and the capacity a certain large "paleo" subculture of both libertarians and right-wingers has for simply Making Things Up and assuming that they are the law is on par with lefties' capacity for pretending their class-warfare prejudices are "economics". Every so often some idiot makes up, that one can legally shoot trespassers (more accurately: "I Have A Right to shoot trespassers"). Usually this ends in simple assault. Sometimes people get hurt.

For a more concrete example (not related to trespass) of what can go wrong, read up on the murder of Grant Kuenzli by Harold Fish. Harold Fish, apparently afraid of dogs, escalated a tense situation by firing a "warning shot." There is not (and there ought not be) any such thing as a "warning shot" in this state, nor anyplace else in the U.S., to the best of my knowledge. Perhaps influenced by silly TV shows, Fish applied made-up use-of-force law to his situation.

I also want readers of this 'blog to stay out of trouble. Heed Charles Heller's advice (as communicated by the Daily Star) and learn the use-of-force law. It's short and given in plain language in Chapter 4 of ARS Title 13.

Campus carry moving along in Virginia; when can we start calling AZ "Overdue"?

Via Dave Hardy, news that George Mason University's firearms ban is being challenged in Virginia's Supreme Court.

Arizona statutes explicitly delegate authority to regulate firearms at the state universities to the Board of Regents, which means that a VA-style challenge could not be made here, or at least that it would have to be structured differently.

But at issue in the appeal are the question of whether or not a carry ban violates the Second Amendment and whether or not prohibiting carry at a University is truly a compelling government interest, whether, if the government has a compelling interest that would necessitate limitations on RKBA, outright carry bans are narrowly tailored, and whether prohibiting students from keeping arms in their dormitories is, following the holding in Heller, unconstitutional. While Virginia law is not Arizona law and Virginia precedents are not binding here, state courts draw on the reasoning of other states' courts frequently, thus our attention in AZ should be on VA.

Moreover, if the appellants prevail, Virginia will join Utah and Colorado in allowing carry at state Universities; as more colleges, public or private, permit carry, the paranoid fantasies of the ban proponents lose credibility. We will, of course, still hear them, and they will, of course, still receive press coverage, regardless. It's over 20 years after Florida passed concealed carry, and the hoplophobes still repeat the arguments they made there every time liberalization is proposed elsewhere, and they are still taken seriously by the press. But it's much easier to point to examples of success than to take the lead ourselves--"Utah students can carry, and it hasn't been a problem--"no matter how much it'd be better for us to have been the leaders in this.

Criminality of CCW permit holders

Via Arizona's Dave Hardy, an update on CCW in Texas. No surprises: CCW permit holders are far less likely to engage in violent crime or burglary than the rest of the populace.

Arizona doesn't provide a similar breakdown. It should. But is there any reason to believe Arizona's concealed carriers to be more criminal than Texas's?

Signs of life.

Those of you who are curious as to what I've been up to in the past two weeks ought to keep an eye on Proceedings of SPIE for a paper entitled "A method for quantifying the force dependence of initiation by T7 RNA polymerase," which quite obviously has nothing to do with Arizona policy aside from showing off some of the cutting-edge biosciences funded in part by that sales-tax surcharge approved at the ballot way back in 2000. Readers of this 'blog probably oppose such things--the (Pareto-) optimal science subsidy is probably nonzero but who's to say if this particular scheme was fair to the individual taxpayer. But at least now you know that some of it went to one of the Good Guys.

Back to the last question, the Legislature didn't take up stranded bills, meaning, among other things, there will still be no campus concealed carry.

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.

SB1214 update

According to a report sent out this morning by Senator Johnson's office, SB 1214, which would allow CCW permit holders to carry on public university grounds, will not receive its third reading today.

Ordinarily, this would mean that the bill is dead, since the House (Arizona has a bicameral legislature) must set its agenda soon. However, if the bill passes the Senate next week, it can still be sent to the house and given its fair hearing by amendment of the agenda. Knowing that SB1214 will be controversial, Senate President Tim Bee held the bill up to allow Senators time to draft amendments, rather than inserting it in the calendar with little more than a day's notice. The bill will likely receive its third reading next week.

A clarification from yesterday; Johnson's amendment to her own bill has not yet been formally adopted; it will be introduced and voted on at the third reading. We can expect it to pass, as it is probably the result of discussion with those like Paula Aboud who feel that CCW training is somewhat inadequate.

Whether it will mollify them enough remains to be seen. Regardless, don't expect a party-line vote on this one. Governor Napolitano and the UA Young Democrats aside, this is a Western state; many Democrats carry weapons and most, unlike Ken Cheuvront, aren't out-of-touch with gun rights advocates or ignorant of even the terms of the debate. Senate Minority Leader Marsha Arzberger probably carries her .38 Special illegally in the Senate building, and can thus sympathize with students, faculty, and staff who want to carry at, to, and from the universities. Rumor has it that Minority Whip Rebecca Rios is also sympathetic.

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.