By GAIL COLLINS
Published: March 28, 2012
The debate over the shooting death of Trayvon Martin seems to be
devolving into an argument about the right to wear hoodies, but it
really does not appear to be a promising development.
Earl Wilson/The New York Times
Congress, which never draws any serious conclusions from terrible
tragedies involving gunplay, did have time on Wednesday to fight about
whether Representative Bobby Rush of Chicago violated the House dress
code when he took off his suit jacket, revealing a gray sweater he was
wearing underneath, and pulled the hood up over his head.
You may remember that Geraldo Rivera took measure of the Martin case and
determined that the moral was: young men, throw out your hoodies. Even
Rivera’s son said he was embarrassed. But, hey, we’re talking about it.
Mission accomplished.
“Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum,”
Congressman Rush said, before he was hustled off for violating the rule
against wearing hats on the House floor.
This is pretty much par for the course. Whenever there is a terrible
shooting incident somewhere in America, our politicians talk about
everything except whether the tragedy could have been avoided if the
gunman had not been allowed to carry a firearm.
You would think that this would be a great time to address the question
of handgun proliferation, but it has hardly come up in Washington at
all. This is because most politicians are terrified of the National
Rifle Association. Also, the small band of gun control advocates are
busy with slightly less sweeping issues, such as their ongoing but still
utterly futile effort to make it illegal to sell a weapon to anyone on
the terror watch list.
The only serious debate Congress is likely to have this year on the
subject of guns involves whether to allow people with concealed weapons
permits to carry their handguns into other states.
Say you were from — oh, maybe Florida, where George Zimmerman was
carrying a legal, loaded pistol while he was driving around his gated
community, looking for suspicious characters. In Florida, even
non-Floridians can get a concealed carry permit. You can get the
application online. From the Department of Agriculture. (“Fresh from
Florida.”)
Under a bill sponsored by Senator Mark Begich, Democrat of Alaska, you
could take your Florida permit and your Florida loaded handgun and
travel anyplace in the country, including the states where the police
investigate every permit application, and say yes to relatively few. “If
this law existed today, George Zimmerman could carry a loaded hidden
handgun in Times Square. Today,” said Dan Gross, the president of the
Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
And that would be the moderate version.
Senators John Thune of South Dakota and David Vitter of Louisiana have a
competing bill that would relieve residents of states like Vermont and
Arizona — which don’t require concealed weapons permits at all — from
the cumbersome process of actually putting in some paperwork before they
tote their handguns to, say, California or New Jersey. Under this one,
Jared Loughner, who shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a judge, a
small child and four other innocent Arizonans, could have brought his
loaded handgun to Times Square.
There is a serious trend toward states letting their residents carry
concealed weapons with no more background check than you need to carry a
concealed nutcracker. All of this is based on the gun rights lobby’s
argument that the more armed law-abiding people we have on our streets,
the safer everybody will be. Under this line of thinking, George
Zimmerman’s gated community was safer because Zimmerman was driving
around with his legal gun. You can bet that future Trayvon Martins who
go to the store to buy Skittles after dark will seriously consider
increasing their own safety by packing heat. The next confrontation
along these lines may well involve a pair of legally armed individuals,
legally responding to perceived, albeit nonexistent, threats by sending a
bullet through somebody’s living room window and hitting a senior
citizen watching the evening weather report.
The Violence Policy Center has a list of 11 police officers and 391
private citizens who have been killed over the last five years by people
carrying concealed weapons for which they had a permit. That includes a
man in Florida who killed four women, including his estranged wife, in a
restaurant in 2010 and another Floridian who opened fire at
Thanksgiving, killing four relatives.
You would think all of this would cause states to stop and rethink. But
no. And, personally, I’m worn down from arguing. Florida, follow your
own star. Arizona, arm your kindergartners. Just stop trying to impose
your values on places where the thinking is dramatically different.
Really, just leave us alone. If you don’t like our rules, don’t come here. Is that too much to ask?
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