We don’t need guns in churches, schools

The most telling — and troubling — moment of a recent daylong state Senate hearing on Georgia gun laws came when state Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) insisted that the right to possess firearms is absolute and any restriction on gun ownership is unconstitutional.

In other words, it would be unconstitutional to ban possession of rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and M-1 tanks.

That extreme position startled many people at the hearing, including Valerie Hartman Levy, president and co-founder of the Metro Atlanta Million Mom March.

Does that mean that if the evolution of firearms eventually led to nuclear-tipped guns, the government would still have no right to act, Levy asked. Would Rogers continue to insist that government has no role if guns grew deadly enough to target-shoot the entire town of Woodstock off the face of the earth?

A flummoxed Rogers offered no response, instead retreating to the jingoism that typifies the gun debate. He repeated a statement that’s both unproved and unprovable in Georgia, that gun owners are the most law-abiding of citizens. It’s unprovable because Georgia lawmakers have ensured that data on gun owners is buried in vaults so deep that even police can’t unearth it.

Rogers argued that the government can’t restrict a right embedded in the Bill of Rights, challenging Levy to cite an example otherwise. Easy, she said, citing the right to privacy. In the post-9/11 world, she noted, the federal government can now obtain information on individuals, such as library and medical records, without seeking a subpoena.

Levy wasn’t the only effective voice at the hearing by the four-member Senate Firearms Law Study Committee. Many others testified against a Senate plan to strike almost all restrictions on where guns can be carried by those with concealed-carry permits. Under the draft Senate bill, guns would be allowed in mental hospitals, schools, college campuses, sporting events, churches and bars. The only no-gun zones listed in the bill are courthouses, jails and police stations.

Among those raising concerns were the Georgia Municipal Association, Central State Hospital, the Georgia Trial Lawyers, Georgia Association of Police Chiefs, clergy members, the Georgia World Congress Center and the University System of Georgia.

Despite that opposition, questions and comments of Senate committee members indicated support for rolling back the prohibitions. For example, state Sen. Preston Smith (R-Rome) argued that Georgia parents should worry less about guns and more about other household objects including bathtubs, “because if you are concerned about safety, more children die in the bathtubs than from guns.”

In this case, hard data exist to contradict Smith. In 2005, 1,187 children and teenagers died from drowning, while 3,027 died from gunshots. There were 4,079 drowning injuries, compared to 17,450 gunshot injuries. A child or teen dies every nine hours in a gun accident or suicide.

On those rare occasions when the gun lobby is forced to acknowledge those numbers, it tries to diminish their impact by pointing out that many of the dead are teenagers. Somehow, that fact is supposed to make their deaths less distressing to the community and the families of the dead kids.

Furthermore, if used correctly, bathtubs, swimming pools and Drano will not kill children. Guns will. Smith’s position on guns undermines his legislative record; he has attached his name to several bills to protect children, including one requiring schools to develop Internet safety policies to protect minors from pornography on school computers. Why wouldn’t Smith endorse safety policies to also protect kids from guns?

The Senate seems unaware that the prospect of gun-slinging fans at football games and armed students in college dorms disquiets many Georgians, even those who own and are comfortable with guns. The committee seems far more concerned with appeasing Georgians who hold concealed-carry permits.

Those permits can be obtained with a $15 fee and a cursory background check, but no training or testing. Even though that background check cannot be trusted to reveal mental health issues, the Senate continues to insist that concealed-carry permit holders are thoroughly vetted and represent the pinnacle of civic responsibility.

That is a statement of belief, not fact, because records of permit holders are closed to the public and maintained only at the county level. Even police departments cannot go to a central database for information. As a result, no one — not the GBI, not the Legislature, not the gun lobby — has any grasp of how often concealed-carry holders break the law.

And clearly some do. A few weeks ago in the Tampa area on a Friday afternoon, the Florida State Patrol arrested a Georgia concealed-carry holder in his 2007 silver Jaguar for racing a motorcycle at 90 miles per hour. The man, Gerald K. Deaguiar, had a fully loaded semiautomatic pistol on each hip and an alcohol level nearly four times the legal limit, according to the highway patrol report.

Yet Georgia legislators believe it would improve public safety to let Deaguiar and others carry weapons into churches and onto college campuses.

— Maureen Downey, for the editorial board (mdowney@ajc.com)