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An open letter to California Law Enforcement

Please end the bigotry, corruption, bias, incompetence and cronyism in the
Concealed Weapons Permit system.

By Jim March � 1998

 In 1923, California�s legislature required legally armed citizens to seek
permission from their Police Chief or Sheriff before carrying a loaded,
concealed firearm for personal defense.  A background check via the State
Dept. of Justice is required, but NO standards for safety training,
marksmanship or legal use of deadly force were ever implemented at that time
or since.

That�s just the start of the problems.

The biggest issue is that this was done during the peak of the �Jim Crow�
era of expanded segregation and discrimination.  These sorts of
�discretionary permit systems� had been in place for decades elsewhere and
were especially popular in the South; during the �Jim Crow� years they
spread even further.  �Discretionary carry permits� were a compromise
supported at the time by, among others, the NRA who like every other
organization in the US had a strong racist streak.  No surprise, so did the
Boy Scouts.  In a 1941 Florida court case where a white gent was caught
packing sans permit, Florida Supreme Court Justice Buford's concurring
opinion in Watson v. Stone offered a rare insight into the true purpose of
these statutes:

�I know something of the history of this legislation. The original Act of
1893 was passed when there was a great influx of  negro laborers in this
State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps.
The same condition existed when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act was
passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers and to thereby reduce
the unlawful homicides that were prevalent in turpentine and saw-mill camps
and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of
security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white
population and in practice has never been so applied.�

So what we have here is a law crafted and designed to allow presumably
bigoted law enforcement brass and officers to abuse citizen�s rights to self
defense.

In 1998, it�s still working exactly as planned, and has even spawned new
evils.

Contra Costa County Sheriff�s dept. issues a small number of permits to
people in �dire need�, many of them domestic violence cases.  Not bad,
actually decent by CA standards�but they have a fixed blanket policy of
zero-issuance in the cities of Richmond and Pittsburgh.  Care to guess which
two towns are predominantly African-American in Contra Costa County?

This reeks of racism at best and is only the most obvious example.
Minorities have been complaining about police traffic enforcement being
biased for years; if true, what would police reaction be to an
African-American seeking a concealed weapons permit?

�Elitism� means that when Dianne Feinstein�s house got firebombed in the
late �70s she was issued a permit to match her .38 snubbies.  Great, except
if you�re in a poor neighborhood and complain about the local crackhouse and
get similar mistreatment, unless you�re the Chief�s cousin you�re on your
own.  In fact, being a politician who�s outspoken against civilian gun
ownership seems to be an excellent way to get a permit � ask Assemblyman Don
Perata of Alameda with his Beretta and permit; Don�s authored a current bill
making martial arts teachers and firearms safety instructors liable for the
misdeeds of their students�it seems he figures the 2nd amendment has had a
stake driven most of the way through it, time to start on the 1st.

When a speaker at an NRA meeting talks about joining the Chief�s golf course
to suck up to him and eventually score a permit, �cronyism� seems to be a
good description.  When a permitholder in Sacramento County was drunk and
disorderly with his gun on Oct. 2, �94, a very interesting police report
(number 94-076998) was taken.  Relevant quotes include:

�the perpetrator had in his possession, "...two concealed weapons permits
signed by Sheriff Glen Craig ... a brass shield inside the [badge] wallet
... [that] appeared to be a law enforcement badge. When given a closer look,
there was a ribbon that ran across the shield that had the word �honorary'
across it. Directly adjacent this badge was an identification card with
[name of alleged perpetrator]'s picture on it, which stated that he was an
honorary deputy sheriff with the County of Sacramento. This honorary deputy
sheriff identification card was signed by Sheriff Glen Craig."�

The report continues with the accused perpetrator allegedly made the
following statements to the Deputies:

�It is all political. It is just a big political game. I am a major
contributor of Lou Blanas and Glen Craig, and they gave me a concealed
weapons permit. They told me not to screw around, and not to mess it up, and
I have tried real hard not to. You can call Mo Bailey. You can Call Lou
Blanas. They know I am a good guy. They know that I would never point my gun
at anyone.���I already told you.  I got that stuff [badge, gun permits, and
honorary deputy card] due to some political ties I have.  I am a major
contributor to you guys (sheriff's department) and through my political
ties, I have been given certain things.  I am probably going to lose them
all now.���Couldn't you please just call Mo Bailey or Lou Blanas so we can
sweep this under the rug? Do we really have to do anything about this? Can't
we just forget that it happened?�

Want worse?  Sheriff Craig of Sacramento was severely embarrassed when a
municipal court Judge wanted a permit.  She immediately got a call back from
Craig�s re-election campaign staff asking for a $20,000 �contribution��other
political donors paying an average of nearly $5,000 were found to be
permitholders.  Investigators also found six staffers in the DA�s office
with Craig-issued permits who lived out-of-county and were declaring the DA�
s office as their �residence� � not only was this felony perjury on their
part, you�d think that the Sheriff would know the address of the DA�s
office?  This information seems to have effected Craig�s decision not to run
for re-election this year.

Now, if all this madness in restricting civilian access to firearms permits
actually prevented problems and reduced crime it could be described as a
�necessary evil�.

Nope.  Just plain �evil� will do just fine.  A growing body of evidence
shows that our system not only isn�t necessary, it�s a direct cause of
increased violent crime.  University of Chicago Professors John Lott and
David Mustard�s seminal peer-reviewed study, CRIME, DETERRENCE, AND
RIGHT-TO-CARRY CONCEALED HANDGUNS comparing crime rates before and after
liberalizing civilian access to self defense had this to say:

�Using cross-sectional time-series data for U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992,
we find that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent
crimes, without increasing accidental deaths. If those states without
right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, county-
and state-level data indicate that approximately 1,500 murders would have
been avoided yearly. Similarly, we predict that rapes would have declined by
over 4,000, robbery by over 11,000, and aggravated assaults by over 60,000.
We also find criminals substituting into property crimes involving stealth,
where the probability of contact between the criminal and the victim is
minimal. Further, higher arrest and conviction rates consistently reduce
crime. The estimated annual gain from all remaining states adopting these
laws was at least $5.74 billion in 1992.�

Their book-length study in more readable form is due by the summer.  It
contains additional research tracking crime rates in places NEAR where
civilian carry prohibition ended showing that crime rates rose as crooks
fled armed victims and in some cases launched cross-border �raiding parties�
in the states that still routinely disarm all honest citizens.

Great.  Marvelous�California is surrounded by Washington, Oregon, Utah,
Nevada and Arizona, all of which have reasonable civilian permit systems in
place.  The paranoia of our head law enforcement officers have made us a
�shining beacon of hope� to every two-bit street thug this side of the
Mississippi!

The magazine �Texas Lawyer� of  Dec. 9th �96, one year after Texas
liberalized their concealed carry laws had this to say in an article titled
�In Session: Handgun Law's First Year Belies Fears of 'Blood in the
 Streets'� by Richard Connelly:

�By now, according to some critics like Harris County District Attorney John
Holmes, prosecutors should be bearing down hard on defendants who have
recklessly whipped out their hogleg like some latter-day Dirty Harry just
because they got cut off in traffic.

Instead, however, there is the sound of silence. In terms of its impact on
both the civil and criminal court systems, the hotly debated
concealed-handgun law, which took effect Jan. 1[96] , has been a popgun�"I'm
detecting that I'm eating a lot of crow on this issue," says Holmes, a vocal
opponent of the law. "It's not something I necessarily like to do, but I'm
doing it on this."�

Note that by 12/9/96 Texas had issued 111,000 permits.  The article
continues:

�"I think that says something, that we've gotten to this point in the year
and in the third largest city in America there has not been a single charge
against anyone that had anything to do with a concealed handgun," Holmes
says.

The two most vocal opponents of the concealed-handgun law, State Sen. Royce
West, D-Dallas, and Nina Butts of the group Texans Against Gun Violence, did
not return phone calls.�

What you can do:

Police Chiefs and Sheriffs: You can fix this with a stroke of the pen.  Of
the 30 states with reasonable permit systems, Texas seems to have the
�harshest�.  Permit applicants must take a class on the legal use of deadly
force (with conflict resolution), pass a background check, pass a shooting
range test and are ineligible not just for felonies but for some
misdemeanors such as DUI and anything violence-related.  In addition, go
ahead and put in a restriction forcing armed permitholders to carry OC
Pepper and/or Mace so they have a lesser line of defense.

Adopt these standards; get the Texas rules and start issuing permits to
those who meet them and announce publicly that you�re doing so.  When just
one jurisdiction does this, and there must be a head LEO somewhere with
guts, it�ll force crime into neighboring areas raising the pressure on them
to do likewise - paranoia or not.

End the corruption, the bigotry, the elitism�and start rebuilding the trust
between civilian and law enforcement officer that�s been sadly lost.

Police Officers: Either individually or in concert with your unions, advise
our lawmakers that it�s crooks who need controlling, not honest citizens.
Your opinions count, a lot, you are the ones who REALLY know what�s going on
�in the streets� and many of you already support civilian permits properly
issued.

Jurors: You do NOT need to routinely support a relic of Jim Crow.  If a
person being charged with illegal carry is also a crook, fine, nail �em�but
ordinary citizens packing for self defense?  Think twice.

Gun Owners: GET INVOLVED.  Carry Permits have become the gun-grabber�s
Waterloo; we can now prove what we�ve been saying all along, the states are
starting to see it, it�s only a matter of time before CA gets smart and
takes the single biggest step against crime since fingerprinting.  Our right
to self defense is NO LONGER a losing battle.

(Thanks to the subscribers to the ca-firearms mailing list; thanks also to
the anonymous author(s) of the �unofficial Dan Lungren page� for finding the
report on Craig�s nutso drunk permitholder -
http://members.aol.com/DanLungren/DanLungren.html
See also http://www.nvcdl.org/racist.htm and
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-284.html for more info.)