Safely obscuring gun facts

The argument for allowing concealed-carry permit holders to cart loaded firearms everywhere, even to places of worship and college campuses, is based on the assumption that such gun owners are beyond reproach and pose no threat to anyone except criminals.

“We are dealing with the safest of the safe,” says state Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock).

“People who get these permits are extremely law-abiding citizens,” says state Senate Majority Whip Mitch Seabaugh (R-Sharpsburg), who heads the Senate committee studying gun laws.

When asked, however, neither politician can offer a shred of state data to support his claim that the hundreds of thousands of Georgians legally able to carry concealed handguns have been carefully vetted and pose no risks. Instead, both attribute their rosy view of concealed-carry permit holders to the same source — GeorgiaCarry.org, a gun lobby group.

Citing studies by researchers in other states whose work is highly controversial at best, GeorgiaCarry.org maintains that concealed-carry permit holders are remarkably law-abiding and that more guns equals less crime.

Of course, going to GeorgiaCarry.org for a balanced assessment of gun issues is like asking McDonald’s for a fair representation of the nutritional value of french fries. A much better source for lawmakers would be the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. When asked whether concealed-carry permit holders are indeed civic paragons who never break the law, GBI spokesman John Bankhead responded with the equivalent of a shrug:

“Nobody knows,” he said. “The state of Georgia doesn’t track it. I don’t know of any way to prove they are law-abiding or disprove it, because there’s no record to say one way or the other.”

“A blind person can get a permit in Georgia, since all you have to do is pass a background check,” says Bankhead. “And that person can be arrested the very next week for a felony, convicted of that felony the next month and still have that permit for the next five years.”

Before the GOP leadership expands the places in civilized society where guns can be carried secretly, lawmakers ought to find out whether sufficient safeguards are in place to protect the public. The state should be monitoring whether permit holders abide by the law and whether their permits are revoked when they don’t.

One relatively easy way to answer that question would be to compare a list of convicted felons against a list of Georgians licensed to carry a concealed weapon. Unfortunately, the General Assembly made that impossible by sealing the list of permit holders from public view, making it impossible to refute claims that all permit holders are law-abiding.

However, we do have some idea what such a comparison might reveal. In 2007, an analysis by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel found more than 1,400 Floridians holding concealed weapon licenses in the first half of 2006 who had previously pleaded guilty or no contest to assaults, burglaries, sexual battery, drug possession, child molestation and murder. Alarmed by that data, Florida legislators quickly made such information off limits to public view.

Unlike most states, Georgia doesn’t require firearms training to obtain a concealed-carry permit, which is issued by the local probate court judge after applicants undergo criminal background checks. The license is valid for five years; however, it’s supposed to be revoked if the carrier is convicted of a felony.

Under state law, however, there’s no way to enforce that provision. When police arrest someone for an offense that makes them ineligible to carry a concealed firearm, officers don’t have to alert the county that issued the permit. That’s because Georgia has no central database where an officer can check easily on whether a permit exists, says Bankhead.

“All the records are kept within each of the 159 probate courts,” he says. “There is no way to check whether the permit is valid. Police would have to call the court in the county where the permit was issued to find out if it was valid, and that would only be possible during business hours.”

As Clarke County probate judge for 12 years, Susan Tate can’t recall ever receiving a call from a law enforcement agency in another Georgia county alerting her that an Athens-area permit holder was arrested elsewhere in the state. Tate, who’s chair of the Council of Probate Court Judges’ firearms license committee and the mental health committee, says that’s a serious hole in the state’s safety net.

Coweta Probate Judge Mary Cranford also says she has never received a call from outside the county about a concealed-carry permit she issued.

“You are issued a permit for five years, and we don’t know what you have done in those five years until you come back to renew,” she says.

DeKalb Associate Probate Judge Arnold Ragas recalled only a single incident of getting such a call. Fulton County called to raise concerns about the concealed-carry permit of a woman convicted of shooting and seriously wounding Fulton County Judge Cynthia Wright in 2003. “But it turns out the woman’s permit was set to expire anyway,” Ragas says.

Judges are also concerned that background checks may not catch applicants with mental health problems treated in private mental hospitals or those deemed to be not guilty by reason of insanity or incompetent to stand trial. Nor do checks always identify people who have been determined in guardianship hearings to be unable to handle their own affairs. While different information databases may contain bits of information, they don’t necessarily connect to provide a full picture, says state Department of Human Resources official Karen Bailey-Smith.

“When you are getting mental health background checks, are you getting everything?” she asks. “The answer is probably not. We need to look at what is falling through the gaps.”

Before Rogers, Seabaugh and other legislators tell Georgians that they can feel safe sitting next to someone in a church pew or a college classroom who is secretly armed, they ought to be able to cite some real evidence for that claim. Otherwise, they’re just making stuff up.

— Maureen Downey, for the editorial board