Plain Dealer opinions spill onto news pages

Seemingly not content with their three editorials on the subject, the Cleveland Plain Dealer's latest rant about the open records issue and concealed carry is written in the form of "news".

Concealing weapons & records

01/25/04
Julie Carr Smyth

Columbus - A battle is under way in America over whether you deserve to know who is carrying a concealed handgun - and Ohio is at its heart.

When Gov. Bob Taft agreed to sign a concealed-carry bill this month that banned access to permit records for everyone except journalists, he "split the baby" in a way no state had done before, said Luis Tolley of the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence.

If a constitutional challenge doesn't arise, the unique compromise could be tried in the growing number of states that are considering keeping the permits from the public. Several states, including Tennessee, Oregon and Texas, are considering bills closing open permit records, Tolley said.

"I think the reason the National Rifle Association is pushing for secrecy clauses is that one of the strongest arguments we've been making in states that are debating concealed-carry is the newspaper stories that come out when people abuse gun permits," said Tolley, whose organization pushes gun control.

Tolley calls his collection of newspaper clippings on bizarre acts by permit holders "The Infinite File" - and pulls from it liberally.

Sometimes the stories are just wacky, like the man who got frustrated when he couldn't untangle his Christmas lights and started shooting.

Others detail serious incidents. Like the man who injured himself and another when his concealed handgun fell out of his pocket in a theater during "102 Dalmatians."

Tolley said lawmakers in four states, including Ohio, have closed permit records to the public within the past year, requiring only that an annual statistical report be released to citizens.

"You can say 15 permits were taken away in March, but that has no emotional resonance," Tolley said. "The emotional power comes from the reporters reporting these incidents."

Some newspapers have used permit records to show that states issued permits to felons, those with a history of mental illness and those who later use their guns to commit crimes, all information that could not be determined through statistical reports. Proponents of concealed-carry laws say these instances are rare exceptions, and that most permit holders are law-abiding.

NRA spokeswoman Kelly Hobbs said her organization - the most powerful of those promoting gun access as a right under the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment - is not driving the national movement to close permit records - but does support the idea.

"It's an issue of privacy for law-abiding citizens. There's no need for the public to see who has a permit," she said. "Law enforcement has access to all those records. They're at their disposal, and that's as it should be."

Many members of Ohio's GOP-dominated legislature, meanwhile, wanted permit records shielded even from journalists. Several spoke in McCarthyesque tones about the idea of releasing permit holder information.

Rep. John Willamowski, a Lima Republican, predicted another "Red Scare" in which permit holders were held up to public judgment and ridicule. Rep. Tom Brinkman, a Republican from Cincinnati, said publishing permit holders' names could increase the likelihood that they would be victimized by criminals or denied employment.

"It just undermines the whole idea of concealment. You don't want criminals to know who's carrying and who's not," Brinkman said last week.

Rep. Jim Aslanides, the Ohio bill's sponsor, threatened to reverse a provision allowing reporters access to permit information if they acted irresponsibly - by, for example, publishing names of permit holders as newspapers in New York, Philadelphia and Florida have done. In response, several Ohio newspapers, including The Plain Dealer, vowed to gather and publicize the names on the Internet.

Toby Hoover, executive director of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, called lawmakers' comments evidence of the paranoia that has fueled the passage of so many state concealed-carry laws in recent years.

"It's the buildup of this culture of fear," she said. "When we have to keep something totally secret, it's unhealthy, undemocratic and suspicious. The fact is they know they will be judged if they carry [guns] openly, and that's why they don't want their names published."

Still, 21 states give the public some form of access to permit records, according to a review of state statutes and interviews with gun-law experts and state officials. Six states don't issue permits, either because they fully allow or fully prohibit carrying concealed handguns.

Also, many of the states that barred or restricted access to permit records before this recent push have highly restrictive concealed-carry laws, known as "may issue" laws, that make it difficult for anyone other than a retired law enforcement officer, judge or prosecutor to get a license to carry. They seal the records because they are viewed as a who's who of well-connected officers of the law.

Perhaps the most open approach to the permitting process is in Delaware. There, the name of every applicant for a concealed-carry permit is published in a general-circulation newspaper. An applicant also must submit five reference letters attesting that he or she "bears a good reputation for peace and good order in the community in which the applicant resides."

Delaware State Prosecutor Steven Wood said the state's law on publication is more than 50 years old and has never prompted any criticism.

"The notion is embedded in the statute that, at some level, the applicant's neighbors and community members have a role to play in the permitting process," Wood said. "That being so, it would naturally not be private."

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Commentary:
If Ohio legislators are "McCarthyesque" for warning of potential abuses with the new open records law, then the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Brady Bunch and Toby Hoover are most definitely Chicken Little-esque for using a few anecdotal stories out of millions and millions of licensed handgun carriers to claim the sky is falling over Ohio.

The truth always manages to wrangle it's way into these stories, somehow. In this one, it comes when a Brady Bunch spokesperson admits that the statistics concerning abuses by licenseholders just don't provide the kind of "emotional power" that one or two individual stories can. As always, these gun ban lobbyists cannot argue on the facts, because the facts don't support their claims. So instead, Tolley admits they must rely on, and fight for, the ability to search for anecdotal stories among the millions of licenseholders in our nation, in order to attempt to make a mountain out of an ant hill.

Here's the truth Julie Carr Smyth didn't bother to print:

On average, less than one percent of CHL holders are ever convicted of any crime, and only a fraction of that one percent are firearms-related. Only a fraction of that fraction of that one percent are violence-related. More off-duty police officers are convicted of violent crime in Florida than CHL holders. 40% of criminals surveyed by the Department of Justice reported having decided not to attack someone for fear they were armed, proving that these laws protect the unarmed as well as the armed. But only to the extent that criminals have to keep guessing.

If the Cleveland Plain Dealer editors have their way, criminals will have something much more valuable to them than a list of who is armed. They'll have a list of those who aren't.