If the words “state secret” instinctively worry you, they should. Except for exceedingly rare exceptions, keeping most everything under confidential wraps is not the way states, or government in general, should routinely conduct their business.
That sort of skeleton-in-a-dark-cupboard modus operandi has, in recent years, enabled the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to pursue a misguided, potentially dangerous policy of restoring gun rights to growing numbers of convicted felons.
As reported last week in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the state board reinstated the right to buy, sell, keep or hold guns to more than 1,440 convicted felons between 2008 and 2013. Violent offenders are an increasing proportion of these numbers.
That should shock many Georgians. Undue secrecy should shoulder a good part of the blame.
There are sound reasons for conducting government’s affairs in the open sunlight of public oversight and scrutiny. Transparent government minimizes the chances for mischief, malfeasance or just plain bad decision-making.
We should be naturally leery of agencies that function under a heavy cloak of darkness.
Yet, working behind a high stone wall of “confidential state secrets” is how the board of pardons and paroles goes about its work.
Skeptics of government’s tendency to overreach should be alarmed at the board’s wide-armed embrace of secrecy. Which makes it harder to learn about harrowing actions such as restoring gun ownership rights to a motley cast of felons whose ranks include a former cop with a history of violence, a two-time killer and a convicted child molester.
Want to know how the decisions to hand back their gun access came to pass? So did we. Too bad. Specific answers are none of our business. They fall under the mantra of “confidential state secrets.”
The pardons board declined our request to provide even a broad explanation for this page of the thinking behind their decision-making.
Which means that most every Georgian is left in the dark about just what led the board to grant 666 pardons in 2013 that restored gun rights, which amounts to a tenfold rise from six years earlier, according to reporting by the AJC’s Alan Judd.
Now, lest gun rights advocates wrongly conclude that this Editorial Board only raises this issue because of a reflexive anti-gun stance, we’ll state again here that Americans do have the right to keep and bear arms.
Law-abiding Americans, that is. Which leaves us struggling to discern just what manner of consistent logic – or lack of same – is driving the parole board’s actions of the last few years. Consider that, among felon applicants in 2008, violent offenders amounted to 6 percent of total gun-rights pardons. By 2013, the door had swung open much wider – felons convicted of violent offenses made up nearly one in three – 31 percent – of felon gun pardons.
Why? Good question. The only public answer drills down to “Just trust us.” That’s difficult when considering this five-member board that does not even act like a board in reaching decisions. Members don’t sit as a group – even behind closed doors – when deciding whether to restore this right or that. Rather, they slide a case file from one member to another until three of them agree. The remaining two members may never even see a given case file.
Add in a lack of public oversight or scrutiny over the board’s decisions and it totals up to a system that should be unacceptable in 21st-century Georgia
We’ll readily note here that real-life is usually filled with more shades of gray than black-and-white absolutes. Which makes the parole board’s job a very tough one.Yet the safety of society makes it all the more imperative that the pardons board do its work exceedingly well as a matter of routine.
Given all that, we won’t make a blanket assertion here that no felon – ever – should have their gun rights restored. But it shouldn’t be an increasingly common occurrence either. The latter is a wrongheaded path for Georgia to pursue.
To set things right, we strongly urge the Georgia General Assembly to quickly begin looking into the parole board’s practices and decision-making. Their goal should be to introduce legislation early in 2015 to correct any problems or excesses that are uncovered.
The gun right enshrined in the Second Amendment demands sober protection and safeguarding. It is equally important for the safety of the overall society, however, that the pardons and parole board equally weigh the safety of all Georgians.
The potential for harm – or even lives needlessly lost – is too high to allow the current approach of liberally handing out gun pardons to continue.
