Firearms deaths fall as millions obtain permits to carry concealed guns

Record numbers now licensed to pack heat - Life- msnbc.com

Waving a chromed semiautomatic pistol, the robber pushed into the building in the bustling Five Points neighborhood of Columbia, S.C., just before 11 p.m. on April 11, 2009. “Gimme what you got!” he yelled, his gun hand trembling.

Attorney Jim Corley was one of four people in the room, the lounge area of a 12-step recovery group’s meeting hall. “He said, ‘Give me your wallet,’” Corley recalled. “So I reached around to my back pocket and gave him what was there.”

Unfortunately for the gunman, later identified as Kayson Helms, 18, of Edison, N.J., that was Corley’s tiny Kel-Tec .32, hidden in a wallet holster and loaded with a half-dozen hollow points. Corley fired once into the robber’s abdomen. The young man turned. Corley fired twice more, hitting him in the neck and again in the torso. Helms ran into the night and collapsed to die on a railroad embankment 100 feet away.

Reports filed by officers who arrived at the scene a short time later called it an “exceptionally clear” case of justifiable homicide. Following South Carolina’s “Castle Doctrine,” which allows the use of deadly force in self-defense, police did not arrest Corley. They did not interrogate him. Corley was offered the opportunity to make a voluntary statement, which he did.

Helms’ friends and relatives were left to mourn, barred by the same Castle Doctrine from filing a civil lawsuit.

Jim Corley became an unintentional spokesman for a burgeoning movement of millions of Americans who secretly and legally pack pistols in waistbands, under jackets, strapped to ankles, stashed in purses or — like Corley — tucked in hip pockets.

From its beginnings in the 1980s, the “right-to-carry” movement has succeeded in boosting the number of licensed concealed-gun carriers from fewer than 1 million to a record 6 million today, according to estimates from gun-rights groups that are supported by msnbc.com’s research. And while hotly debated, the effect of this dramatic increase is largely unknown.

Gun enthusiasts claim a link between more private citizens carrying concealed weapons and the nation’s dramatic decrease in violent crime. Gun-control activists argue that concealed-carry permits are being handed out to people who should never get them, sometimes resulting in tragic, needless shootings.

Effect on crime is hotly debated
But even with the push to expand concealed-carry rights now in its third decade, no scientific studies have reached any widely accepted conclusions about the movement’s effect on crime or personal safety.

Statistics from the national Centers for Disease Control do indicate that the murder and mayhem predicted by many opponents of concealed-carry laws have not come to pass. But even that point, while celebrated by gun-rights activists and conceded by some concealed-carry opponents, is disputed by others.

Both sides do agree on one thing: More Americans than ever are carrying hidden guns.

Firearms laws have been growing more relaxed across the United States for years. Gun-control activists have failed in efforts to re-enact the nationwide ban on certain semiautomatic rifles they call “assault weapons.” They were unable to block a change in federal law, signed by President Obama this year, which allows guns to be carried in national parks. And they watched in dismay as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2008 that the Second Amendment grants residents of Washington, D.C., the right to own and keep loaded handguns in their homes.

“We’ve had a very good run,” said Andrew Arulanandam, chief spokesman for the 4 million-member National Rifle Association, the nation’s largest and most powerful voice for gun rights.

It’s a run that has often been paced by the work of the NRA and its allies on concealed-weapons laws.

In a little more than 20 years, the concealed-carry movement has won changes in scores of laws across the nation to boost from nine to 37 the number of “shall issue” states in which civilians must be given concealed-carry permits, known as CCWs, generally if they are 21 or older, do not have a criminal record and are willing to submit to fingerprinting and a background check. In two more states, Alaska and Vermont, most adults may carry concealed handguns without obtaining permits.

The movement's successes have energized some gun-rights activists to push for laws that further increase their ability to carry weapons, even when those laws trump private property and states’ rights.

The reasons for the push to loosen concealed carry laws are themselves open to debate.

Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center, a gun-control group, said the movement “has to do with selling more guns.” While it was pushed by groups like the NRA, it also “dovetailed with the gun industry’s desperate need to find a new market.”

“Their efforts at reaching out to minorities and women have failed,” said Rand, whose group advocates banning all handguns and some rifles but believes sporting rifles and shotguns should remain legal. “The industry constantly has to look for a way to make a guy who already owns 15 guns buy a new one.”

But Alan Gottlieb, president of the Second Amendment Foundation, which promotes and defends gun rights, said the movement has been a grass-roots drive.

As he built his Bellevue, Wash.-based organization from its start in 1974 to its membership of 600,000 today, he constantly polled members for direction. Each time, he said, they responded with a clear message: “‘I want the right to carry.’ That was the single biggest thing everyone wanted.”

When Gottlieb’s foundation got its start, just four states allowed regular citizens to carry concealed weapons simply because they wanted to.

Some other states were known as “may issue,” meaning concealed weapons permits were dispensed at the discretion of state or local law enforcement officials. That system often was dogged by charges of political favoritism, and it continues to be in states such as California and New York, where it is still in place.

And many states did not allow civilians to carry concealed weapons under any circumstances, as is still the case in Illinois and Wisconsin.

While four states joined the “shall issue” ranks through the early and mid-1980s, the movement’s turning point came in 1987, when a successful “shall-issue” campaign in Florida received heavy national media coverage.

The publicity had a snowball effect, according to Gottlieb. By 1990, there were 15 “shall-issue” states and by 2000, there were 30.

The NRA’s Arulanandam said the movement gained even more momentum in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“People saw it live, they saw people taking trash cans and throwing them through store windows right in front of TV cameras,” he said. “People processed these images, and they processed these events, and they realized that when the unthinkable happens, they want to have an effective means of defending themselves and their loved ones.”

While gun-rights and gun-control activists argue about what led to the loosening of concealed-weapons laws, they agree that the lobbying prowess of groups like Gottlieb’s and Arulanandam’s helped make it happen.

“We are tenacious and we work hard to pass whatever our legislative agenda is,” Arulanandam said.

“Tactically, they’ve been brilliant on a lot of issues,” agreed Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, perhaps the nation’s best-known gun-control advocacy group, which opposes "shall-issue" concealed-weapons laws but does not advocate a ban on handguns.

The concealed-carry movement also has been aided by a fractured opposition, said Jim Kessler of the progressive think tank Third Way, who has been advocating gun-control measures for years. “The gun safety movement is splintered. … They have different issues and they fight each other.”

Indeed, gun-control advocates are often at odds over such basics as the effect of relaxed concealed-carry laws on crime.

Nationwide statistics aren't available
Rand, the spokeswoman for the Violence Policy Center, acknowledged that “we don’t have centralized data-gathering to know what people are doing with these licenses.”

“(But) anecdotally, we know they’re doing quite a bit of harm,” she said.

Her group posts news accounts of concealed-weapons permit holders allegedly involved in firearms deaths on a part of its Web site called “Concealed Carry Killers.” The site says 130 civilians and nine police officers have been killed and 13 mass shootings have been carried out by people with concealed-weapons permits since May 2007. Helmke, of the Brady Campaign, cited the work of Rand’s group in a recent blog post that mocked the NRA for saying concealed weapons permit holders “are all ‘law-abiding’ citizens.’”

But Third Way’s Kessler, while agreeing there is “no evidence” that more concealed-weapons permits have led to lower crime rates, said, “I’ve not seen any evidence on the other side that it creates havoc either.”

Gun-rights activists point to studies they say prove that having more guns in civilian hands, whether being carried by permit holders or not, has reduced crime rates.

“Firearms in the hands of law abiding citizens prevent 1 million robberies, murders and rapes every year,” said John Pierce, a Virginia-based gun-rights activist with opencarry.org. That’s at least partly due to the huge increase in “shall-issue” states, which has been “the most significant beneficial public policy move in my lifetime,” said the 41-year-old Pierce.

But Dr. David Hemenway, Ph.D., a Harvard professor of public health who has studied gun violence for years, said that when it comes to concealed-carry laws, neither side can make a legitimate claim about their effects on crime.

Hemenway said that the most definitive review to date — a 2004 look at research on the topic by the National Research Council — “found no credible evidence that passage of right-to-carry laws increases or decreases violent crime.”

Americans overall are far less likely to be killed with a firearm than they were when it was much more difficult to obtain a concealed-weapons permit, according to statistics collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control. But researchers have not been able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

In the 1980s and ’90s, as the concealed-carry movement gained steam, Americans were killed by others with guns at the rate of about 5.66 per 100,000 population. In this decade, the rate has fallen to just over 4.07 per 100,000, a 28 percent drop. The decline follows a fivefold increase in the number of “shall-issue” and unrestricted concealed-carry states from 1986 to 2006.

The highest gun homicide rate is in Washington, D.C., which has had the nation’s strictest gun-control laws for years and bans concealed carry: 20.50 deaths per 100,000 population, five times the general rate. The lowest rate, 1.12, is in Utah, which has such a liberal concealed weapons policy that most American adults can get a permit to carry a gun in Utah without even visiting the state.

The decline in gun homicides also comes as U.S. firearm sales are skyrocketing, according to federal background checks that are required for most gun sales. After holding stable at 8.5 to 9 million checks from 1999 to 2005, the FBI reported a surge to 10 million in 2006, 11 million in 2007, nearly 13 million in 2008 and more than 14 million last year, a 55 percent increase in just four years.

Because the gun death rates parallel an overall drop in crime, Hemenway suspects that the decline “has nothing to do with concealed-carry laws.”

While other researchers point to numerous, complex reasons for fluctuations in the crime rate, Hemenway said the surge that began in the 1980s and the subsequent decline were "all about inner-city gun crime." Crime "declined nationwide after the crack wars died out," Rand agreed.

Hemenway said valid studies of the effects of more concealed weapons permits on firearms deaths could only be obtained by studying shooting deaths that involved concealed-carry permit holders.

But such data is not collected by most law enforcement agencies and not compiled nationally, said Rand of the Violence Policy Center. Her group would like to see nationwide reporting of the number of concealed-weapons permit holders, a “systematic collection of arrest and conviction data” for them as well as hard data on the number of justifiable homicides they’re involved in.

But “the NRA and the gun lobby would never allow that,” Rand charged. “The gun lobby is trying to keep all this data secret. … They know it’s not going to go well for them.”

The NRA’s Arulanandam denied that the organization universally opposes the collection of such data, but said it would not endorse the concept without seeing a specific proposal in writing.

Meanwhile, the NRA and its allies continue to push for even fewer restrictions on where civilians can carry concealed weapons, in some cases provoking charges that they are trying to place gun rights above other fundamental rights.

They fell just two votes shy of winning approval in the U.S. Senate last summer of a measure that would have guaranteed state-to-state reciprocity for all concealed-carry laws. The Thune amendment, named for sponsoring Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., would have automatically allowed a permit holder from one state to carry a concealed gun in all states that issue such permits.

Currently, reciprocal arrangements are left to the states, and critics of the Thune amendment labeled it a trampling of states’ rights because it would have forced one state’s training and other standards on states that may have tougher rules.

“I think a lot of senators did not understand that if Florida gives someone a concealed-carry permit and they have a criminal record a mile long, you’ve got to let them carry in your state,” Rand said. “I think that’s why you haven’t seen it come back up. … People are seeing it as more of a states’ rights issue.”

Even some gun-rights enthusiasts like Pierce agree with that. “It would have been wonderful for the 6 million permit holders across the country, but ultimately I think it would have been constitutionally unsupportable,” he said.

But others, including Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation and Arulanandam of the NRA, say gun-control advocates had no such concern for states’ rights when they pushed for federal laws to ban specific weapons and mandate background checks. They foresee that argument crumbling and say it’s only a matter of time before right-to-carry reciprocity is the law of the land.

2nd Amendment vs. property rights
Another front in the push to expand concealed-carry rights involves private property. In most states, property owners are free to bar concealed-gun carriers. But gun-rights activists say that goes too far when it extends to firearms locked in private vehicles. The NRA successfully helped defend Oklahoma laws that prohibit banning guns in private parking lots and has tackled the issue in other states.

Arulanandam said the parking lot fight was actually started by gun-control groups who encouraged employers across the country to search workers’ vehicles and fire those caught with guns, often outdoorsmen planning to go hunting before or after work. Once gun-control forces made it an issue, the NRA responded, he said.

“We’re always looking for opportunities to enhance the rights of law-abiding Americans,” Arulanandam added.

Rand said such comments are double-talk from “cynical” NRA leaders who are more interested in fear-mongering and fund-raising than constitutional rights.

“The idea that you send people out into public and if someone else has a gun, you have to kill them, that becomes anarchy,” she said.

But Jim Corley, the Columbia, S.C., attorney whose three squeezes of the trigger of his Kel-Tec .32 ended the life of would-be robber Kayson Helms, says he’ll stick with his gun.

“I was glad I was legally able to carry,” said Corley, 61, unemotionally, in the gravelly voice of a three-pack-a-day smoker. “I did what had to be done under the circumstances at the time. If it happened again today, I’d do the exact same thing.”

Castle Doctrine should be Federal Law or exist (as written is SC) in every state.

But it does amaze me that they would put this story on MSNBC.

Federal law? Are you kidding me? A Federal Castle Doctrine law would indicate that the subjects in this country can actually fend for themselves. Ain't gonna happen. We can't even take care of our own health care with the government doing it for us.

__________________
- Change it back -

MSNBC ??? Could they be thinking about being " Fair and balanced " ???? NAAA

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I like Ike.

The gun control groups point to the number of people with carry permits who commit crimes and apparently they believe they would never have done what they did without their permit in their pocket. I'm sure some CCW holders have committed crimes, but I'm sure the fact they had the permit had nothing to do with it. Do they really think someone contemplating murder would be deterred if they were turned down for a carry permit? It's not like they can murder somebody and the cops take a look at their permit and say, guess we can't charge him, he has a permit. Last I checked someone legally carrying a gun has to abide by the law, and there are regulations imposed on the carrier because he is carrying. These mental midgets have one goal- control of our lives, making us totally dependent on our government. Your power to keep yourself safe usurps that, and that can't be allowed.

I would like to know what the percentage is of CC holders who have committed crimes involving the carried firearm. I'm willing to bet it's very low. Knowing the libs, they are probably counting traffic tickets as crimes!

A couple of more years when we get rid of Lautenberg they may actually be able to get reciprocity. Kenedy's gone, so that would be the two worst gun banners out of there.

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Pete.

If the numbers are to be believed (and that is questionable), even Rand's own numbers suggest that the rate of homicide committed by permit holders is ridiculously low -- roughly 0.0025% (assuming each death was caused by a different permit holder) -- and that figure does not account for how long a period of time (how many permit holders coming and going from permit status) was required to accumulate the 152 firearm-related deaths to which she referred. The rate of homicide in the United States as a whole is 0.0054% (see link below). Granted, I am comparing different types of statistics to some extent, but the comparison still says something about the weakness of Rand's argument.

Table 1 - Crime in the United States 2008

Vote now, vote often! Take the poll!

Yet another CCW article on MSNBC:
Utah, Florida help non-residents pack guns - Life- msnbc.com
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Utah, Florida help non-residents pack guns

Why two states’ permits are such hot tickets for concealed-carry crowd

By Mike Stuckey
Senior news editor
msnbc.com
updated 9:17 a.m. ET, Thurs., March. 25, 2010

The one-third or so of American adults who can’t obtain permits to carry concealed weapons from their home states need only look to Florida and Utah — and their mailboxes — to legally carry hidden guns.

Because both states grant concealed-carry permits to non-residents and have reciprocal agreements with other states under which their permits are recognized, possession of a Utah or Florida permit gives non-residents the right to carry hidden firearms in as many as 32 other states — though often not the one in which they live.

Tens of thousands of gun owners have obtained the non-resident permits, and their numbers are surging.

That has helped fuel the larger debate over concealed-carry permits. Gun-rights activists say Americans who pack heat to defend themselves are exercising a legitimate right and have helped reduce the nation’s crime rate. Gun-control advocates say that there’s no proof that gun-toting civilians make the streets any safer and that looser concealed-carry laws are a recipe for disaster.

As the debate continues, the Utah and Florida permits are becoming ever-hotter tickets for out-of-state gun owners.

“Protect your family when traveling!” shouts a headline on one of dozens of Web sites that offer training and help with the paperwork to obtain the Utah and Florida permits. “You don’t have to be a resident of Utah or Florida!”

The non-resident permits are roundly criticized by gun-control advocates, who see the states that issue them as tools of groups like the National Rifle Association.

“I think the reason states are doing this, especially Florida, is the sheer power of the gun lobby in those state legislatures,” said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, which seeks a ban on private ownership of all handguns. “It’s not a question of what is in a state’s interest, but what is in the gun lobby and gun industry’s interest.”

But NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam called non-resident permits an “organic” solution to needlessly restrictive state gun laws.

“There are people in all these states that are trying to get right-to-carry permits and are not able to,” he said. “As a result, they’re forced to explore other avenues. The solution to that would be for as many states as possible to have a ‘shall-issue’ permit system,” which allows most adults to obtain concealed-carry permits on demand.

Big increases in two states
The popularity of non-resident licenses with gun owners from heavily populated states like California and New York, which do not have “shall-issue” systems, has helped fuel big increases in both Utah and Florida’s concealed-carry permit numbers. That in turn has contributed to the nation’s fivefold increase in concealed-weapons permits, from fewer than 1 million in the 1980s to an estimated 6 million today.

In Florida, the number of new and renewal applicants for concealed-carry permits from out of state increased 529 percent — from 2,703 to 17,003 — from 1999 to 2009, compared with a 145 percent increase in applications from residents of the Sunshine State over the same period.

Florida is on a pace to grant new and renewed permits to about 25,000 out-of-state residents in the current fiscal year. Of 692,621 current Florida concealed-carry license holders, 71,059, or more than one in 10, are not state residents.

Over the past 10 years, the number of concealed-carry permits issued by Utah has surged 431 percent, from 40,363 to 214,403, a figure that would represent nearly 8 percent of the state’s population. But more than half the permits now go to non-Utah residents, up from just 12 percent a decade ago. Of the 1,011 instructors authorized by Utah to teach its concealed-carry license class, 641 live out of state — 100 in California alone — while 370 are Utah residents.

Both states require applicants to undergo background checks and submit to fingerprinting. Florida requires proof of firearms training that can be satisfied in a number of ways; Utah requires applicants to take a four-hour class on gun-safety and legal issues taught by a state-certified instructor. The Florida license costs $117 and is good for seven years. Utah charges $65.25 for a five-year permit.

The time and expense are well worth it to gun owners who want to pack their pistols in as many places as they legally can. Non-resident Florida licenses are good in 30 other states and non-resident Utah licenses are honored in 29 other states. The reciprocating states largely overlap, but there are a few differences. By obtaining both, for example, a resident of Illinois, which does not grant concealed-gun licenses to civilians, could legally carry in 32 states outside of his or her own, including the neighboring states of Missouri, Indiana and Kentucky.


Gun-rights activists say states that unnecessarily restrict concealed-carry gave rise to the practice of licensing non-residents.

“It’s not Utah that has made the permit so valuable,” said W. Clark Aposhian, chairman of the state’s Concealed Weapons Review Board. “It’s other states that have made it so valuable.”

But the permit’s surge in popularity with out-of-state gun owners has given pause to Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, who last September expressed fears that his state could become known as a “wholesale clearinghouse” for concealed-carry licenses.

Aposhian, a firearms instructor who has taught firearms classes to Herbert and dozens of members of the Utah Legislature and helped them obtain concealed-carry permits, said Utah had some issues with “rogue instructors” in other states who were more interested in making money from the process than in providing good instruction. But he said that those issues have since been resolved and that he doesn’t expect any changes to Utah’s policy on non-resident licenses.

As to why Utah appears almost eager to help non-residents get concealed-weapons permits, Aposhian said, “I’d look at it from another way. We don’t just deny a permit based on a subjective line in the dirt where a border is. If you fit the requirements to possess a firearm legally and pass a background check on that, you’re entitled to the permit.”

When it comes to background checks, he said, “I’ll put Utah’s process up against any other state’s.” He said residents with concealed-carry licenses are checked for run-ins with the law on a daily basis. Out-of-state permit holders are checked quarterly, Aposhian said, but he expects the state to implement a daily check within 18 months.

“If we find out you’ve been convicted of drunken driving or a felony, we ask you to immediately send your permit in.”

Last year, Utah revoked 409 concealed-carry licenses, less than 0.2 percent of the total. More than half the revocations were for permit holders who had alcohol-related issues or a protective order lodged against them. Utah does not report how many revoked permits were held by non-residents.

Florida, meanwhile, revoked 643 concealed-carry permits in 2009, less than 0.1 percent of its total. Only 11 of those were held by non-residents.

Gun-rights activists say the low revocation rates are evidence that the permits are overwhelmingly given to solid, law-abiding citizens. Aposhian said if there was any evidence of a problem with Utah’s non-resident system, it would be fixed. “We have a very intelligent legislature regarding guns,” he said.

But gun-control advocates say it’s likely that non-resident permit holders aren’t checked as thoroughly or as often as they should be.

Gun-control group: 'Bad policy'
“We think that states issuing (permits) to non-residents is bad policy,” Rand said. “It’s a way for people to get (permits) despite not being able to qualify in their own state, sometimes because of a criminal history.” For instance, some states count only criminal convictions against an applicant, while others may take arrest records into account.

She pointed to a current situation in Philadelphia, where authorities are fuming because residents who have been denied permits or had them revoked in Pennsylvania have been able to obtain Florida concealed-carry licenses that Philadelphia police are required to honor under reciprocity agreements.

The “Florida loophole,” touted at Pennsylvania gun shows by firearms trainers, exists because Florida has a lower bar for denying and revoking permits than Pennsylvania. Florida does not check to see if non-resident applicants have been denied permits by their home states, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture, which issues the concealed-carry permits.


The loophole is "a sick trick of the gun dealers in gun shows to circumvent the laws of Pennsylvania," Philadelphia Police Lt. Lisa King, who oversees concealed-carry permits for the city, told the Philadelphia Daily News last month. Some lawmakers have vowed to close it.

But Aposhian, the Utah firearms trainer who also lobbies lawmakers on gun issues, said there’s no evidence that the soaring number of concealed weapons being legally carried across the nation causes problems, regardless of how permits are obtained. In fact, even though it would cost him business, he would like to see Utah and other states allow concealed-carry with no permits required.


“It seems to work in Vermont and it seems to work in Alaska,” he said, pointing to two states where firearms homicide rates are lower than the national average. “We don’t have a pattern of problems. It is probably time to start it in more populous states and see how that goes.”

But gun-control groups are vehemently opposed to abandoning the permit system.

“The gun rights folks really are trying to push the envelope even further all the time,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to end Handgun Violence, which advocates rescinding all “shall issue” concealed-carry laws and letting police decide who should get a license to pack heat.

And yet another. Must be a special or something... Title is misleading, however, and neglects to reflect the 30 day wait captioned later in the article.

22 minutes for a concealed-weapon permit - Life- msnbc.com

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22 minutes for a concealed-weapon permit

I’d never held a loaded pistol, but that was not a requirement

By Mike Stuckey
Senior news editor
msnbc.com
updated 9:18 a.m. ET, Thurs., March. 25, 2010

SEATTLE -

On a cool morning in the epicenter of Left Coast liberalism, I went looking for what it takes to pack a little heat.

Although the NRA held its annual meeting here in 1997, the Emerald City’s image is more often associated with Birkenstocks than Glocks.

In keeping with that image, then-Mayor Greg Nickels in 2008 banned firearms on all city property in the wake of a shooting at a music festival. But last month, the gun ban was thrown out by a judge who said it violates a state law that forbids local governments from regulating most gun-related matters.

Despite Seattle’s leftward lean, Washington state actually has some of the nation’s least-restrictive gun laws. For instance, it’s one of only seven states in which there is no minimum hunting age. And when it comes to concealed weapons, Washington wrote the book on “shall issue” systems, which enable most adults to obtain licenses to carry hidden guns on demand.

The state passed its measure in 1961, long before the “right-to-carry” movement surged in the mid-1980s, boosting the number of “shall issue” states and those where no permit is needed from nine to 39.

Never held a loaded handgun
As a native and 40-year resident of California, which has some of the nation’s most restrictive gun laws, including a “may issue” concealed-weapons permit system, I was not raised in a hunting or shooting family and, at 53, have never owned a firearm.

More than 20 years ago, I went trap-shooting with a friend and actually proved pretty good at blowing little clay pigeons out of the sky with a 12-gauge Mossberg. I also seem to remember squeezing off a few rounds from a rifle or two, though I’m not certain.

But I know for a fact that when I applied for my Washington State Concealed Pistol License, I had never fired a revolver or semiautomatic handgun of any caliber. Not once. In fact, I had never even held a loaded pistol in my hands. And I had never taken a minute of formal firearms training.

The state of Washington cared nothing about this when it came to issuing me a license to carry anything from a .22 revolver in my jacket pocket to a .50-caliber Desert Eagle in my waistband. The state also had no interest in whether or not I own a gun.

Indeed, the only requirements under the Washington law that grants me the right to obtain a concealed-carry permit are that I am 21 or older, have no history of mental illness and no criminal past. I meet all three. And there’s no requirement that I exhibit any knowledge of firearms or experience with them to buy a gun.

That mental health question
Curious if it would really be that easy, I decided to go through the process of obtaining a concealed-carry permit of my own.

The King County Sheriff’s Office in downtown Seattle accommodated me with brisk efficiency. I filled out a single-page application with my vital stats, address, phone number and driver’s license number.

I then answered eight questions, seven concerning whether or not I’d been convicted of any crimes or had any other run-ins with the law and one that asked if I had “ever been confined in a mental health facility for more than fourteen days.” The answers to all were “No.”

Moments later, I presented my photo ID and $55.25 in cash for the application and fingerprinting fees and was soon ushered into a back office to be electronically fingerprinted.

Twenty-two minutes after parking my car, I was back behind the wheel. Less than one month later, as required by the law, I received my Washington State Concealed Pistol License. It is good for five years. Thanks to reciprocal agreements, it is also good in 21 other states.


Despite my best journalistic efforts at impartiality, I was amazed at how easy it was to obtain the license and nonplussed about the lack of a training requirement.

Many gun-rights activists say that’s as it should be, even though other states require a variety of training and testing, including basic marksmanship in some cases. While they are staunch advocates of extensive training for every aspect of gun-handling, they just as firmly believe the government should not mandate it.

“We encourage anyone who wants to learn more to go attend one of our classes or any class out there,” said Andrew Arulanandam, chief spokesman for the National Rifle Association, adding that more than a million people take NRA classes each year. But gun ownership is a constitutional right, not a privilege, he said, and the government should not require training.

Tom Gresham, the host of nationally syndicated television and radio shows about firearms training, said anybody who carries a concealed gun should take at least “a two- to three-day class,” and that much of the focus of the instruction should be on how to avoid using the firearm.

“The good courses will tell you if you go the rest of your life and never pull your gun out, you will have learned your lesson well,” he said. “When people are done with it, they stop flipping the bird when they’re driving, they stop doing anything that could possibly escalate a situation. … This is a parachute. This is a life-saving device. The only reason you’re going to use this is because everything else has failed and you’re going to die.”

‘A gun’s a simple item’
While Gresham believes that all “responsible” adults should carry a gun, he too does not believe the government should require training.

But doesn’t the government’s role in protecting the “greater good” mean it should require training and testing, as states do for driver’s licenses?

No, said Alan Gottlieb, president of the Second Amendment Foundation, which promotes and defends gun rights. “A gun’s a simple item,” he said. Unlike driving a car, “There aren’t rules of the road. It’s like, how does the gun operate and how do I operate it safely? How do I load it, how do I take the safety on and off and how do I shoot it? When you’re buying a gun for self-defense, you’re not planning on shooting somebody down the block. You might have to shoot something that’s a threat that might be pretty close to you.”

Gun-control groups couldn’t disagree more.

The main problem with “shall issue” permit systems is that they do not allow local police to decide who is qualified to carry a gun, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

“We should start handling guns more like automobiles, with registration and licensing,” said the group’s president, Paul Helmke. The Brady Campaign has called for federal legislation that would mandate training for all handgun owners.

‘Constant state of paranoia’
The concealed-carry training issue is a moot point to another gun-control group, the Violence Policy Center, which seeks to ban handgun ownership by civilians in the United States.

“Do you want to live in a constant state of paranoia, which is what a lot of these people do?” asked the center’s legislative director, Kristen Rand. “To plan that you’re going to be confronted by some time and need to use deadly force, that’s never going to happen to most people.


“If you feel like you really need to have a gun, get a shotgun and keep it in your house.”

In my home state of Washington, that would be even easier than getting a concealed-carry permit. I could pick one up on the way home from work tonight, as could any law-abiding citizen 21 or older.


But for the record, and without going into whether or not it should be a government requirement, I have no plans to own any gun without extensive training in a classroom and on a firing range.

At this point, even though I had an introductory handgun lesson and fired a number of pistols under close supervision in the course of reporting this article, I still don’t really know how to load one.