By The Oregonian - 2/25/2013
Oregon gun owners cheered by the demise of Sen. Ginny Burdick's proposals to ban large magazines and scary-looking semiautomatic weapons should leave the champagne in the fridge for the time being. The Legislature's gun-control advocates are still hard at work, and the direction in which they're heading would create problems for law-abiding citizens over the long term and, perhaps, do nothing to enhance public safety.
We're leery of slippery-slope arguments, but two concepts supported by Burdick and Sen. Floyd Prozanski, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, could grease the transformation of concealed-handgun policy into something resembling smoking policies around the state. Sure, it's legal to smoke, but the places in which you can do it keep disappearing. A bill considered this week would even prohibit people from smoking in vehicles in the presence of minors.
Just to be clear, we're not talking about a proposed expansion of background checks for gun purchases. This is a good idea, as is Burdick's abandoned proposal to ban big magazines.
We're talking, rather, about legislation that would effectively prohibit people with concealed handgun permits from bringing their guns into schools and the state Capitol. Yes, school districts could choose to allow concealed weapons, and license holders could seek special permission to bring their weapons into the Capitol. But the former is unrealistic -- few districts, if any, will say "yes" -- and the latter is at the very least a hassle, and potentially an insurmountable roadblock.
Concealed handgun privileges are subject to limitation, and license holders should accept that. State courts and federal facilities are off limits, for instance, and private property owners have the right to say "no" to weapons. What license holders shouldn't accept without protest, however, are further limitations that don't address demonstrated problems.
And what are the problems that would be fixed by the limitations Burdick and Prozanski support?
We asked Burdick during a recent editorial board visit to share instances in which a license holder had compromised safety by bringing a gun into a school. She could recall only an episode in which a janitor had brought a gun into a school in a backpack, and the details were vague. However, schools already may bar employees from carrying weapons.
And what about the proposed Capitol prohibition? What mayhem have gun owners committed to justify the further limitation of their privileges?
They had a rally, in anticipation of which a number of other groups canceled their trips to the Capitol, says Prozanski. He also notes that some of those who participated in this act of political speech brought their guns -- legally -- into the Capitol building itself.
Lawmakers need to do better than this. The rally was a well-publicized political event that endangered no one.
No matter what happens this session, gun owners can be sure that the impulse to bar concealed weapons in more and more places will endure. As originally conceived, in fact, Burdick's Capitol proposal would have allowed concealed handguns to be prohibited in any public building -- libraries, city halls, wherever. Gun owners haven't seen the last of this idea.
Incremental limitations on unpopular, though legal, behavior are nothing new, of course. Smokers have been targeted in this way for years, and in many cases -- banning smoking in parks and other open-air venues, for instance -- the supporting health-related arguments are either nonexistent or plainly silly. But that hasn't slowed the momentum.
(c)2013 The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.)
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