Today's Musical Selection: "I Will" by the Beatles
Hello there, all. Today I want to emit one of my periodic blasts against my home state, Virginia. Alert readers are probably aware by now that Virginia is a schizophrenic state, containing a bizarre admixture of tech barons and bureaucrats in the north with old-fashioned antebellum country folks down south. Half the state has embraced the 21st century; the other half refuses to relinquish the 19th. This combination tends to produce certain bizarre side effects, one of which has recently been in the news.
It seems that Virginia law permits people to carry firearms openly in public. Yes, you read that right. Furthermore, while everyone was giggling about that Sunday blue-law business, the genius state legislature passed a law invalidating local gun-control statutes, meaning that localities (such as Alexandria) with the brains to ban open carry were SOL.
So, as you would expect, happy gun owners have been celebrating by brandishing their sidearms in public. Some of these incidents have occurred right in Dot-Com Canyon, which is mildly alarming to me, given that I live there. Police were dispatched to the scenes, where the gun owners reminded them that, as insane as it my sound, they were powerless to disarm these law-abiding citizens. I figure it's only a matter of time before I bump into one of these Quick Draw McGraw wannabes. I can't wait.
Let me be clear here. In all of these cases, it was clear that the gun owners had no intention of firing their weapons. They simply wished to display them. This doesn't make me feel better. I have a simple, pragmatic attitude toward gun-control laws: Can any good come from permitting guns in a particular situation? And personally, I cannot foresee any good coming from allowing people to pack heat in public. Call me a bleeding-heart if you will. Just based on the way people drive around the Fedroplex, it occurs to me that the last thing this situation needs is for the parties to be armed.
In fact, most Virginia gun laws fail to meet this first-do-no-harm standard. A few years back, the Old Dominion liberalized its concealed-carry permit laws. Previously, you had to demonstrate an actual need for a concealed-carry (for instance, employment as a private investigator). Under the new rule, concealed-carry permits were given away as prizes in McDonald's Happy Meals. Try as I might, I could not foresee any good coming from offering concealed-carry permits to people who could not prove a need for them.
Later that year, Fairfax County tried to pass a law barring civilians from bringing loaded weapons into police stations. The state shut them down. I thought and thought, but I couldn't think of any good coming out of a situation in which a law-abiding citizens brings a loaded gun into a police station.
This is what life's like in Virginia. My dad and I were once driving back from Maryland, and there was a traffic backup on the bridge back into Virginia. I wondered aloud at the cause of the backup, and he said, "They're stopping everyone, checking for guns. If you don't have one, they issue you one. You just can't live in Virginia without a gun, you know." He rolled his eyes.
I understand that pro-gun people come from a different place on this than I do. I once dated a country girl, and she mentioned that, for fun and relaxation, she liked to shoot off her gun at tin cans in the backyard. I reacted to this as if she'd just revealed that she clubbed baby seals for fun. She was mystified by my reaction. For her, guns were part of growing up; she'd been around them from a young age and considered it part and parcel of life. I considered guns as a threat, something to be avoided if at all possible. It was a stark example of the different worlds we'd grown up in.
Fortunately for gun owners everywhere, we have the NRA. The NRA regards any attempt to limit people's possession of firearms as a crisis, and will fight against even reasonable gun control tooth and nail. It's the principle of the thing, they say. And I imagine it is. But isn't it interesting that some of the NRA's staunchest defenders can't stand the ACLU standing up for unpopular speech, on the principle of the thing? Personally, I think it's good to have people standing up for pure principle, provided that they aren't permitted to write the laws.
When you let unchecked principle rule the day, you get people wearing sidearms in restaurants. And I find myself checking the real estate listings in other states.
Speaking of moving... I'm quite glad that Mike Ditka elected not to run in the Illinois Senate race. Had he run, he just might have won. And had he won, I would have had to seriously consider fleeing to Canada. Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger bothered me, but as they governed states in which I had no particular business, I could rest assured that they were someone else's problem. But Senator Ditka, being in Washington, voting on laws that affect the entire country, would become my problem in a hurry. We dodged a bullet.
Kudos to Ditka, though, for recognizing that he wasn't temperamentally suited to the Senate. Someone might upset him, he said, and then he wasn't sure what he'd do. We already have one Jim Moran in Congress, we don't need two.
That's all for today. Slop tomorrow!
Posted by Fred at July 15, 2004 04:22 PM