Concealed-weapons bill triggers debate on guns

Ask O.E. Rogers why he has a concealed-weapons permit and he offers an answer that sounds like one of those word problems found in a child's math textbook.

"It's better to be tried by 12 of your peers than carried by six," Rogers said, a grin crinkling his 78-year-old face.

Smile aside, the pallbearer quip -- first uttered to Rogers years ago by a firearms instructor -- is no attempt at cheeky gun humor. Indeed, it's doubtful the retired park ranger and World War II veteran could take the matter of concealed weapons any more seriously -- even if his life depended on it.

Rogers obtained a Nevada concealed-weapons permit in 1996. He has never found himself in a situation where he needed to pull his gun, and he's self-assured enough to predict he never will. Still, Rogers would rather wind up answering to authorities than meeting his maker on the rare chance a criminal tries to attack him.

"You have to take any means to keep yourself alive," Rogers said. "The legality of it -- you can sort that out later."

Assembly Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick, R-Gardnerville, feels likewise -- whether the attack occurs in the privacy of one's home or on the floor of the Nevada Legislature.

Hettrick has proposed a bill that would expand the rights of people with concealed-weapons permits to carry firearms into public buildings with the exception of schools, airports and facilities with metal detectors at every entrance.

Building administrators also could post signs at each entrance indicating no guns were allowed. Confronted by metal detectors or signs, a person would have to receive written permission from the building's supervisor to carry a concealed firearm inside.

Nevada law bans concealed weapons from courthouses, schools, prisons and state and federal buildings. That leaves public officials -- including legislators -- too vulnerable, according to Hettrick, who obtained a concealed-weapons permit last fall.

"As a public official, people know where you're going to be daily, and the law says I can't carry a concealed weapon with me," he said. "Public buildings are places where people sometimes become more aggravated, and you can't protect yourself. Everybody -- it's guaranteed in our Constitution -- has the right to protect themselves on a personal safety basis."

Hettrick's measure has breezed through the Assembly and appears headed for approval in the Senate, an unsurprisingly easy journey given Nevada's pro-gun leanings.

Nonetheless, similar to gun legislation proposed in statehouses across the country, Assembly Bill 166 invites scrutiny for one somber reason: the April 20 shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., that left 15 people dead.

In the weeks since the massacre, at least three states have reconsidered or quashed pending legislation that would have benefited the firearms industry, and two other states have expedited action on anti-gun measures.

At the federal level, Congress is weighing no fewer than 30 bills that would either place restrictions on firearms manufacturers or beef up requirements for buying guns. President Clinton also has renewed his call for stricter gun control.

AB166, by contrast, has stirred almost no dissent. But Hettrick and other concealed-weapons supporters insist that the lack of debate does not tar Nevada as a lawless outpost. They instead argue that the overwhelming majority of permit holders are law-abiding citizens, and that liberal concealed gun laws help reduce violent crime.

"If you're a criminal and your state is issuing concealed-weapons permits, are you going to be as self-confident if you think your victim is armed?" Rogers said. "I think I would be a little more hesitant if I were a criminal."

Statewide statistics compiled by the Legislative Counsel Bureau would appear to back the assertion that few who legally carry concealed weapons suffer from itchy trigger fingers. Of the approximately 13,000 permits issued in Nevada since the state passed its concealed-weapons law four years ago, no more than a dozen have been revoked due to gun-related incidents. An undetermined number have been pulled for other offenses ranging from drunken driving to domestic violence.

The sketchiness of the bureau's study notwithstanding -- several counties provided incomplete information -- gun supporters credit rigorous background checks with holding down the incidence of crimes perpetrated by permit holders.

The sheriff's department in each county issues concealed-weapons permits. Those seeking a license -- often referred to as a CCW permit, for conceal-and-carry weapon -- must reside in Nevada, be 21 or older, show proof of gun registration and successfully complete a state-approved firearms course. In Clark County, Metro charges a $60 application fee and a $39 fingerprint fee.

Background checks

Each county filters applications through the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety, which performs both state and federally mandated background checks on individuals. A laundry list of reasons can prompt application denials and license revocations, including if the person's state criminal record denotes:

* An outstanding warrant of arrest.

* A felony conviction or a conviction for a violent crime.

* Pending entry of a felony conviction or recent suspension of a sentence for a felony, as well as pending criminal charges.

* A conviction for domestic abuse or stalking, or if the applicant is subject to a restraining order, injunction or other order of protection involving domestic violence.

Permits also may be turned down or yanked if a person is on parole or probation, has been judicially declared incompetent or insane, habitually abuses drugs or alcohol, or provides false information on the application.

Beyond sifting through a person's criminal history in Nevada, the state taps into an FBI database to determine if the individual has committed similar violations elsewhere in the United States that would derail the application. Federal law also bars illegal aliens and individuals with dishonorable military discharges or who have renounced their U.S. citizenship from obtaining a concealed-weapons license.

As of last week, Metro had issued 9,422 permits in Clark County since 1995. About 70 had been revoked and another 158 denied. A breakdown of the causes behind the revocations and denials was unavailable. The county has revoked at least one permit for an incident of alleged self-defense in which a concealed weapon was discharged.

No permit, registration or licensing is needed to own and carry a rifle, shotgun or handgun in Nevada as long as an individual does not attempt to conceal the weapon in public. A person buying a firearm through a licensed gun distributor in Nevada must clear a federal background check, but state and federal regulations do not govern firearms purchased through newspaper and magazine ads, gun shows or elsewhere.

In that respect, the precautions placed on concealed-weapon permits help weed out most of the applicants who might run afoul of the law, Mike O'Donoghue said. The owner of Discount Firearms in Henderson, O'Donoghue asserted that the background checks virtually guarantee concealed gun permits will fall into the right hands.

So confident is O'Donoghue of the screening process that he favors allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons into schools, something prohibited under current state law and AB166. He reasons that the Columbine High bloodbath might have been averted if teachers had carried firearms.

Moreover, O'Donoghue said, "All the teachers should have a concealed-weapons permit so that if one of them went postal, the others could say, 'No, that's not going to happen.' An armed society is a polite society."

In the case of Columbine High, Hettrick added, "Would (armed teachers) have made a difference? It couldn't have gotten much worse."

Different opinion

Predictably, the anti-gun lobby begs to differ. The Washington, D.C.-based Center to Prevent Handgun Violence has documented dozens of violent crimes committed by licensed concealed-weapons owners in the last three years. Many more incidents may have occurred, but tracing such crimes is difficult because most states, including Nevada, do not disclose the identities of permit holders, center spokeswoman Nancy Hwa said.

"The answer to violence isn't throwing more guns into the mix or broadening concealed-weapons laws. This idea that a gun will make you safer is a myth that has been oversold," she said.

Some gun enthusiasts also stop short of endorsing concealed weapons in public buildings. Although Pahrump resident Tom Klein owns 10 guns, he has never given much thought to obtaining a concealed-weapons license.

"Letting people go anywhere with concealed guns, that seems a little extreme to me," the 50-year-old Klein said, gazing at the assortment of Rugers, Glocks, Berettas and other handguns for sale at Discount Firearms. "I'm not sure if we need to go that far with public buildings."

Fellow customer John Royce, 70, a retired police officer, suggested that allowing concealed weapons into public facilities only ups the chances of bloodshed.

"You're just possibly -- possibly -- asking for it," he said. "You should leave your gun in the trunk of your car, not bring it into a public building."

The prospect of someone carrying a concealed gun into the Legislature, meanwhile, makes Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, "a little bit nervous."

Coffin has proposed a measure that would tighten what he sees as a loophole in the state's concealed-weapons law. Senate Bill 449 would require a sheriff to provide notice to a victim of a violent crime if the assailant is applying for a concealed-weapons permit, regardless of whether the license is denied.

(A third concealed-weapons bill, pitched by Sen. Maurice Washington, R-Sparks, would require non-residents who had a permit in another state with gun laws similar to Nevada's to report to the local sheriff before they could carry a concealed weapon here.)

While acknowledging that he likely will vote for AB166 when it moves to the Senate floor, Coffin harbors reservations about the measure's purpose. There has been scarce public demand for expanding the concealed-weapons law, and he has received only two letters regarding AB166 -- both from the same man, a supporter of the initiative.

"If a person is going to shoot a public employee, they're going to do it anyway -- sign or no sign, permit or no permit. That's a defense of the bill, but it's also a question to pose about whether the bill is necessary," Coffin said.

Yet Hettrick remains steadfast about the good wrought by concealed weapons. He maintains that illegally obtained firearms -- including those used in the Littleton shootings -- present an exponentially bigger problem, and that the hundreds of thousands of responsible gun owners nationwide too often are lumped in with their reckless criminal counterparts.

"Sometimes the wrong people get guns and do dumb things," Hettrick said. "We need to punish those people who break the law, and protect the ones who are abiding by it."

Hettrick, a longtime National Rifle Association member, freely admits accepting campaign contributions from the gun lobby during his six years in the Legislature. But he said he heard from the NRA and other pro-gun groups only after he proposed AB166.

In defending his bill, Hettrick cited research linking concealed weapons to lower crime rates. He called a book released last year by criminologist John Lott "definitive" proof that letting qualified gun owners carry concealed firearms reduces crime.

Lott's tome, "More Guns, Less Crime," analyzed the FBI's yearly crime figures for all 3,054 U.S. counties from 1977 to 1995. He compared the statistics of states that closely control or prohibit concealed weapons with states such as Nevada that have looser, or "shall-issue," laws. Lott's conclusion: For each year a state had a shall-issue law on the books, murders declined by an average of 3 percent and rapes and robberies by 2 percent.

Lott pegged the percentage of concealed-gun permits revoked nationwide -- for any reason -- at "only hundredths of 1 percent." (The revocation of 70 permits out of 9,422 issued in Clark County amounts to about seven-tenths of 1 percent.) Lott also estimated that people use guns defensively 2.5 million times a year to fend off attackers and snuff potential crimes.

Both neutral observers and the anti-gun lobby have criticized Lott's calculations, in no small part because gun enthusiasts have elevated his book to bible status. One Georgetown University economist went so far as to employ Lott's numbers and, using a different statistical approach, showed that crime rates actually rose in states with shall-issue laws over the 18-year stretch in question.

The Center to Prevent Handgun Violence reported last year that based on the FBI's annual figures, the overall crime rate in 29 states with strict concealed-weapons laws dropped by 4.4 percent from 1996 to 1997. The rate fell 2.1 percent during the same period in 21 states with shall-issue laws. Nevada's overall crime rate crept upward 1.2 percent during that time.

From 1992 to 1997, the report noted, the national violent crime rate declined 19.4 percent, with rates dropping 24.8 percent in states with restrictive concealed-weapons laws compared to 11.4 percent in states with looser statutes. The incidence of violent crime in Nevada jumped 14.6 percent during the five-year span.

More evidence

Against the backdrop of conflicting statistical data served up by pro- and anti-gun forces, the anecdotal evidence offered by law enforcement officials on concealed weapons perhaps carries more weight.

Nevada enacted its shall-issue concealed weapons law in 1995. That year, Metro investigated 122 homicides. The number ballooned to 163 the following year, then dropped to 148 in 1997. The department handled 116 homicide cases last year.

Metro Lt. Wayne Petersen attributed the decrease in homicides to any number of factors, from longer prison sentences for violent criminals to an increased emphasis on domestic violence intervention. One variable he omitted: concealed firearms.

"I just don't think the carrying of concealed weapons has had an effect on the homicide rate. We haven't seen any specific cases where a crime has been thwarted or prevented because of an average citizen legally carrying a concealed weapon," Petersen said.

In fact, law enforcement officials in neighboring states think the opposite may be happening.

There are 23,975 active concealed-weapons permits in Utah, which adopted its shall-issue law in 1995. Jamie Allred, a law enforcement agent with the the state's Bureau of Criminal Identification, conducted an informal study in 1996 of the violent crime rate for one year before and after the law was passed. He found a negligible change in the figures.

Furthermore, Allred said, there are few examples of concealed-weapons permit holders using their guns for self-defense or to scuttle a crime. A more common occurrence is for people to brandish a firearm in a spasm of road rage, an act that typically leads to revocation of their permit, he said.

"I don't know of any case where a permit holder has successfully prevented a crime or protected himself. But I do know there have been a number of cases where things have escalated with permit holders. It used to be a honk here and a flip of the finger there. Now it's 'Look, I have a gun,' " Allred said.

Sheriff Vaughn Killeen presides over Ada County, the largest in Idaho, an area that is home to 300,000 residents and Boise, the state's capital. The county has issued 7,720 concealed-weapons permits since passing its shall-issue law in 1989.

Back then Killeen worried that relaxing access to concealed weapons would spark a surge in crime. Time has eased those fears, he admitted, describing permit holders as "good, honest, law-abiding citizens."

Yet even so, Killeen said, "My sense is that concealed-weapons permits have had very little, if anything, to do with dropping crime rates." His 20 years in law enforcement also make him skeptical about Lott's claim that permit holders interrupt 2.5 million criminal offenses a year.

"It's very strange. You'd think law enforcement would hear about (that kind of deterrence) much more if it were happening that much. It does happen some, but not to that degree," he said.

Which may be beside the point, in the sense that those who legally carry concealed weapons say all they really want is to feel secure.

Henderson resident Ray Williams, 55, owns six pistols and as many rifles. The retired National Guardsman carries a gun with him most of the time, but he has yet to use one other than on a shooting range. Still, Williams said, a concealed firearm provides peace of mind -- not to mention a means of self-defense if a couple of thugs jump him.

"I just like knowing that I got something that they don't know I got," he said.

Amen, Rogers added.

"I'm 78 years old," he said. "If someone comes after me and I don't get the first lick in, I've had it. A firearm is my only chance."

archive