By Paul Carpenter;
A bill in Congress, co-sponsored by most of the Pennsylvania delegation, including U.S. Rep.
Charles Dent, R-Lehigh Valley, would require every state to honor the gun permits issued by every other state. That, CeaseFirePa yelped on Thursday, "would expand the Florida loophole to every state," allowing pistol-packing yahoos to run amok.
The problem with those claims is that they are bogus. The entire premise is false. Let's start with what happened in Philly.
Marqus Hill, it was reported, had his gun permit revoked by city police. That, said The Philadelphia Inquirer, happened "after a 2005 confrontation with officers." He then got a permit by using "the Florida loophole," as CeaseFirePA put it.
That "frightening loophole," wailed the Philadelphia Daily News, resulted in 18-year-old Irving Santana getting shot full of holes by Hill. "Outrageous," the paper said. "How many more people have to be killed before lawmakers buck the NRA and move to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them?"
The Lancaster Intelligencer Journal/New Era, blaming the reciprocity "loophole" for taking Santana's life, thundered that the new measure in Congress "threatens to force Pennsylvania to accept reciprocity with every other state."
On Wednesday, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial cited the Santana case as proof of a "lunatic loophole" and said the proposal in Congress, if enacted, will cause untold "mischief and misery" everywhere.
Before you join the stampede to repeal the second item in the Bill of Rights, consider a few other facts.
First, a gun permit had nothing to do with the Santana shooting, one way or the other. Police said Hill was in an apartment when Santana and two other thugs tried to break into his car. He "bolted" out of the apartment with a gun to confront them. Hill said one of the thugs also had a gun.
There is no legal requirement for a permit to carry a gun that is not concealed. Permits are only for
concealed handguns.
Second, Hill was denied a concealed gun permit by police on the flimsiest of grounds. He was not convicted of any crime and was employed as a security guard. That's why he had to resort to the Florida "loophole."
Third, a judge threw out the weapons charges against Hill, but kept the homicide charges, apparently because of excessive force. (Santana had 13 holes in him.)
The Florida gun permit and any other reciprocal agreement between states had absolutely nothing to do with the Hill-Santana situation. Legally, the situation would be exactly the same if there were no reciprocal agreements, no "loopholes," or no gun permits whatsoever.
The gun control frenzy in this situation is based entirely on fraudulent arguments.
A few other points need to be raised.
Those who justify gun control by saying the Second Amendment applies only to a "militia" (which they say now refers to the National Guard) apparently cannot read.
The people who drafted that amendment — notably James Madison and
George Mason — explicitly and clearly defined "militia" as those armed citizens who are not under government control. Does that sound like the National Guard to you?
In Switzerland, virtually every law-abiding citizen is armed. Mexico has rigid gun control and only government authorities can legally be armed. In terms of crime problems, which of those two societies do you think has a better approach?
Gun permits are licenses that apply only to the privilege of
concealed guns. Rights and privileges are not the same. Self-defense is a right; driving a car is a privilege. Free societies can never let government restrict rights for the sake of expediency.
I'd like to see what certain newspapers would say if someone suggested that free press rights should be exercised only with licenses issued by government.
http://articles.mcall.com/2011-10-02/news/mc-paul-carpenter-guns-20111002_1_gun-control-ceasefirepa-loophole
