AppId is over the quota
AT a big gun show here a couple of weeks ago, J. D. Schechter was busy signing up new members for the Arizona Citizens Defense League.
“We apply pressure on our hired hands in the state legislature in Phoenix to expand the rights of Arizonans to carry guns,” explained the elaborately mustachioed Mr. Schechter, who was wearing a park ranger-style hat and a khaki uniform. Next to his table in the sprawling exhibition hall, hundreds of people browsed through booths that offered a vast array of handguns, rifles and shotguns, hunting knives and survival gear, military memorabilia — and handmade jewelry.
Lately, I’ve been thinking more about firearms after strong reaction I had to a recent column about travelers who were stopped at airport security checkpoints for trying to carry guns onboard planes. I even heard from a few readers who believe that the relaxation of so-called right-to-carry gun laws in many states ought to expand federally to allow responsible, legal permit-holders to carry firearms on airplanes.
No one I know believes this will actually happen. On the other hand, statistics show that more and more people are carrying guns to airports. As I noted in the column, the Transportation Security Administration director, John S. Pistole, said recently that screeners now find on average four or five guns each day in carry-on bags. Eighteen months ago, the T.S.A. was finding only about two guns a day.
Consider the week of Dec. 19 through Dec. 25, a period when the T.S.A. found 31 guns in carry-on bags, many of them loaded, with a round in their chambers.
Meanwhile, gun sales are booming. The F.B.I. says that the number of criminal background-check applications for purchases of guns set a record in December for the second consecutive month.
The subject of guns is complex and emotional. Just this past week, several fatal shootings made the news, including an off-duty federal agent who was killed on Long Island while trying to stop a robbery and a park ranger in Washington killed in Mount Rainier National Park while making a routine traffic stop.
And, I’m well aware of the irony of writing about a gun show in Tucson, where one year ago this Sunday, a gunman opened fire during a political event outside a supermarket, killing six and wounding 13 others, including my own congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords. The next big gun show scheduled for Tucson, incidentally, is this weekend, at the Pima County Fairgrounds.
But let’s simply address the subject of firearms and air travel. As a tiny percentage of overall travelers, most of the people carrying guns to airports do not have terrorist intentions.
Ron Paul, a Republican presidential candidate, suggested in a statement last year that prohibiting legal gun owners from carrying weapons on airplanes had “set the stage for 9/11.” Others point to reports of federal “red team” security inspectors routinely finding in random tests that firearms readily get through security checkpoints undetected.
“Look at how many guns already get through,” said Kurt Amesbury, a director of a gun owners group called Keep and Bear Arms. Mr. Amesbury was one of the activists who objected to my column about more guns turning up at airport checkpoints. (Guns can be legally transported in checked bags after a passenger declares them.)
Mr. Amesbury and some other gun rights supporters I spoke with say they believe that airline security can be enhanced if more passengers were armed. I don’t agree, but their positions deserve to be understood.
In essence, they say that gun owners with appropriate licenses should be able to carry weapons after making themselves known to security officials and the captain. Federal air marshals on board would also know which passengers are armed. “I present my permit and say that I’m carrying,” Mr. Amesbury said. “Why wouldn’t that work?”
Of course, there are other implications, including dangerous felons circumventing permit procedures and legally carrying weapons.
Still, I’m happy to say that even as I was being denounced on gun rights Web sites as participating in a “jihad” against the Second Amendment, at least some agreement was achieved on the subject of “knuckleheads,” which is how I referred to those who claim they simply forgot they had a gun in their bags. Some supporters of gun rights who objected generally to the column did agree that a right to carry arms probably also includes a responsibility to remember where your gun is.
Asked about this at the gun show, Mr. Schechter handed me a Citizens Defense League refrigerator magnet and pointed to rule No. 5, which stated: “Always maintain control of your defensive tools.”
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