My Buddy (Probably) Gets a Permit to Carry a Gun

I never thought I would see the day.

A long-term friend of mine is about the best candidate for a concealed weapon permit I have ever known. His criminal record is entirely unblemished. He also owns his own business and regularly handles large amounts of cash, lives and works in a high-crime area, and has been a civilian volunteer for a police department for years. He very much wanted a CCW license, but because he lived in LA County he thought he never would get one. He is the poster child for the “license to carry” permit holder.

This fact notwithstanding, I thought hell would freeze over before ultra-liberal Los Angeles County would approve giving gun licenses to “responsibly armed citizens” like my buddy, no matter how much he wanted one, no more how eligible he might be. It was verboten — politically unacceptable — in that jurisdiction.

But LA County is now giving out such concealed weapon permits, much to my amazement. Hell has frozen over, apparently.

I normally would be loath to use any headline from Breibart, that hyper-partisan rag whose articles usually only collide with the truth by accident. But this headline encapuslizes what has happened in LA County with racial tensions, “defunding” of police, rising murder rates, and the issusing of CCW licenses. Or check out this local news report:

They have not “defunded” the police where I live, nor is that likely to happen anytime soon. But if the progressive Democrats who occupy distant cities like Minneapolis or Seattle or New York want to defund their police forces, they have that right. But it seems only logical then that they would allow citizens who meet minimum criteria to get CCWs and arm themselves in self-defense. But liberal places in liberal states usually don’t. Places like Los Angeles don’t.

But now Los Angeles is. 

Good for them.

But is this really a big deal? Is it objectionable?

It shouldn’t be.

The kind of person who qualifies and applies for a CCW license is almost always the sort not to act the fool with a firearm. But plenty of people just want no guns around them at all. Guns to them are like human feces or nuclear waste or some other distasteful thing. Not around me. No guns here.

And the result in places like Los Angeles or New York where racial tensions are particularly high is that the police are cowed, criminals emboldened, and bystanders scared. Street thugs carry guns illegally and are willing to use them. In such places gunfire regularly rings out at night. The murder rates have exploded. Look at the below statistics —

I suspect Los Angeles County changed their policy at least in part due to an upcoming Supreme Court decision about New York firearm policies. Liberal jurisdictions see an extreme anti-gun policy as inviting legal decisions which can sweep away local prohibitions. The District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago rulings by the Supreme Court were disasters for liberal city laws which sought to ban handguns but instead enshrined into law the individual’s right to own one. If LA County automatically rejects almost every single CCW application they get, is that an extreme and unreasonable violation of its residents 2nd Amendment rights?

That is a very good question.

I can almost see the gun control lawyers in Los Angeles beginning to sweat, and even panic. Allowing the most reasonable applicants (like my friend) to get CCWs seems like great insurance from a lawsuit. And there really is next to no downside to that, as I see it.

But the CCW issue threatens to become a “culture war” flashpoint which becomes so politicized that no good middle ground position can be found.

Progressive Democrats would seem to want to have nobody besides police carrying a gun, and maybe not even the police. (Of course then it is just the many criminals who pay no attention to the law carrying while carrying guns illegally.) This is the victory of ideology over practicality. Especially after a pandemic where millions more Americans bought guns in a culture already saturated by them.

But gun rights activists on the conservative side are no better, in my opinion. Texas just passed a law making “constitutional carry” the law in their state, joining nineteen others states that do so. This means that anybody can carry a firearm openly or concealed (if they are not a felon or otherwise “prohibited person”) with no official classroom training or firearms practice. All those little old ladies with pistols in their purses — without any guarantee they can safely use them. All those dudes with guns in their waistbands — and no formal training in firearms or deadly force law. No background check. No having to qualify at the shooting range. “Permitless carry” seems to me like a bad idea in Texas or anywhere, although states have a right to make their own laws (as long as they don’t violate federal law). Carrying firearms without a license seems to be taking the 2nd Amendment to the extreme of gun rights activism. Again, it is the victory of ideology over practicality. I very much appreciated Kevin Williamson’s article on this — 

“‘Constitutional’ Carry? Maybe Not”
By Kevin Williamson
May 5, 2021

I often wonder if the United States is having a bit of a sociopolitical emotional breakdown. Whether it is gun control or abortion law or race relations or whatever, angry liberals and angry conservatives have made everything a hyper-partisan smackdown to the point that the nuance of complicated situations are reduced to a binary them vs. us, liberal vs. conservative, black or white dynamic.

It would almost be too obvious to say that next to nothing in the world is either black or white. That almost all complicated problems should be seen in the maddening shades of gray they present.

But we live in a childlike culture where complexity is ignored in a hothouse culture of partisan political activism.

Take facemasks, for example.

I read that here in Ventura, California at the height of the pandemic there were groups of conservative anti-mask protesters who would storm into grocery stores in violation of masking statutes, just to make a point. How stupid. And you have liberals who demand everyone wear a facemask in public long after the CDC and President Biden advised the country that the vaccinated pose next to no risk and don’t need to wear masks. I have seen California liberals claim that they would wear a mask indefinitely so others would not think they were Republicans. Facemasks have become indicators of political and cultural allegiance. In a hyper-partisan environment where the SARS-CoV-2 virus transmission is rare, next to nobody nowadays who is vaccinated is wearing a mask because of a reasonable scientific reason. It is politics. Toxic politics. “Us versus them” identity politics.

And these toxic, ideological-driven politics have less and less to do with reality.

And have more to do with anger and “defeating” the evil people on the other side. “Owing the libs,” for conservatives. Or “fighting white supremacy,” for liberals.

How stupid it all is.

How tedious.

So I will congratulate my friend if and when LA County gives him his long sought-after CCW. But his ability to be a “responsibly armed citizen” has for some time been available in all the other counties surrounding Los Angeles, not to mention in other states. Is it that big a deal?

It shouldn’t be.

But it probably will be.

Because it will become a culture war flashpoint.

Both sides will paint the dialectic in near-apocalyptic terms, and prepare to fight bitterly over it.

How exhausting.

How childish.

“Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path,” President Biden said in his inaugural speech. “Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war.”

But too often it is.

What a bunch of children.