Fighting fire with firepower a no-go

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

How often do people commit crimes with weapons they can legally conceal and carry?

We don’t know. States with so-called “concealed carry” laws typically keep secret the names of citizens with permits to carry hidden guns.

But the Violence Police Center in Washington does track cases that come to public attention despite secrecy rules. Nationwide, holders of concealed carry permits have shot and killed nearly 300 people, including 11 law enforcement officers, since May of 2007.

Similar analyses done before the concealed-carry permits became secret unearthed a long list of people with questionable backgrounds who were authorized to carry concealed weapons.

The risk of handing out concealed-carry permits to people who may go on to commit crimes is reason enough to reject the current effort in Springfield to legalize concealed carry.

Proposed legislation would allow county sheriffs to give applicants at least 21 years old the right to carry concealed and loaded guns in most public places in Illinois.

Elliot N. Fineman, president and chief executive officer of the National Gun Victims Action Council, points to another good reason to say no: Even now, Illinois’ record-keeping isn’t good enough to weed out those whose backgrounds should prohibit them from owning firearms, concealed or not.

And there are similar problems on the national level. As columnist Mark Brown pointed out Tuesday, thousands of mental health reports on potentially dangerous people have not been entered into the national database used for conducting background checks. Those people can buy guns right now, and no one would be the wiser. We don’t need to give them the right to secretly carry guns around as well.

This is an issue that stirs up emotion on both sides. People who live in areas where others illegally carry guns with impunity naturally feel that they, as law-abiding individuals, should be able to carry guns as well. That’s understandable.

But to Tio Hardiman, director of CeaseFire Illinois, a concealed-carry law takes us in the wrong direction.

CeaseFire tries to mediate in neighborhoods where conflicts too often are settled with guns. But its efforts to settle disputes without guns would be undermined by a concealed-carry law, Hardiman said. Such a law simply would promote the idea that guns are the answer.

“Concealed carry — what that does is reinforce the idea that violence is OK,” Hardiman says. “What we are doing is trying to talk these guys down, but this encourages that cowboy mentality.”

Some legislators think concealed carry should get support as a tradeoff for approving civil unions and abolishing the death penalty. But this issue is too serious for that kind of horse-trading.

Every year, gun violence claims some 32,000 lives a year in America. Advocates on each side of this debate cite competing studies, but even those who favor concealed-carry laws, which now are in effect in all but two states, have to admit those laws haven’t stopped the carnage.

Illinois should take the lead in rejecting concealed-carry legislation and strive to find other measures that really will save lives.