Hindsight from The New Gun Week April 10, 1999
Whipsawing Missouri's Proposition B
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive EditorThe nation's first popular referendum on the right to carry is scheduled to be held on April 6.
For the first time anywhere, the people of a state will get to decide whether or not the residents of that state over the age of 21, who pass a background check and complete an approved training course, and apply for a license to carry a concealed firearm shall be issued that license.
It may sound like a simple issue to many of the readers of Gun Week, but it is not simple at all.
Many citizens of Missouri-one of only seven states which have no statewide concealed carry law for the protection of its citizens-have been pushing for passage of just such a law for some seven years now. The state legislature has approved such a law but Gov. Mel Carnahan has repeatedly blocked it.
Some might say that the voters could have solved the problem by replacing Carnahan at the ballot box. But even that is more complex than it sounds for two reasons: Carnahan is not so easily defeated, and any candidates for his office are as anti-concealed carry as he has been.
The solution seemed to be to put the whole question before the voters, and that's exactly what the legislature did, and why there will be a vote on April 6.
Gunowners Confused
Many of our readers will again assume that such a vote is a no-brainer in which anyone with common sense would vote "Yes." But even some gunowners may vote "No."
For example, on a recent radio talk show on which I was a guest, one avowed gunowner and supporter of the right to keep and bear arms told me, and especially the radio audience, that he would vote "No."
He claimed he would do so because he was perfectly happy to leave the law the way it was, which he said allowed him to transport a handgun in his car or truck if it was openly visible on the seat. It was radio, of course, and I had no idea how big this caller was. But apparently he saw no reason to ever want to have a handgun concealed upon his person while all alone outside his vehicle by day or night, and he saw no reason why some smaller person, especially a woman on the night shift at a hospital or otherwise easily exposed to predatory criminals, should ever have the need or desire for the means to self-protection. Besides which, Missouri's Prop B would not change existing law relating to carrying openly.
When questioned further, he said that he was also afraid that all kinds of people who were too unstable to be armed would be allowed to carry guns concealed and shoot other people over minor fender-benders or other perceived minor slights.
Now, you might think that this caller was a shill for Handgun Control Inc. because he was mouthing all the same kind of arguments that they advance whenever the right-to-carry issue is raised in a state. But his knowledge of guns seemed to suggest that while he was not a plant, he was certainly a gullible gunowner who had swallowed the anti-gun catechism.
And that's part of the problem. The people of Missouri, like the people of most states, are divided on the gun issue. There are probably about 30% who are knowledgeable and committed advocates of the free citizen's right to lawfully keep and bear arms. There are another 30% or so who are totally committed to the anti-gun side, living in fear of guns and the people who own them.
That leaves about 40% in the middle that proponents and opponents of the right-to-carry measure are trying to educate and convince to vote a particular way.
The proponents of the measure include all of the pro-gun groups in the state, as well as their national organization allies, who are rallied behind the official proponents' organization-Missourians Against Crime (MAC).
The opponents are led behind the scenes by the powerful governor, whose daughter Robin is the on-stage leader of the official anti-gun political action committee. Of course they are allied with all of the anti-gun factions in the state as well as Handgun Control and the anti-gun media.
The law that will take effect if the majority of the voters say "Yes" is already written by the state legislature. In general, it tracks most of the other right-to-carry laws which have been passed now in some 30 states across the country. The legislature also wrote the original ballot title-what actually goes on the voting machine instead of the entire law enacted in the legislature. However, the anti-gunners sued to have the ballot title rewritten. They won and the ballot title was changed, but not the law itself.
If you wonder why the anti-gunners did that, it was only part of a campaign to confuse the electorate and whipsaw the pro-gunners in the hope of gaining multiple advantages with one gambit. That's part of politics. By doing things like that they hope to confuse not only the 40% in the middle, but some of the 30% who are pro-gun-like the caller on the radio show I mentioned earlier.
But that hasn't been the end of the whipsawing strategy.
As the campaign for and against Proposition B in Missouri started to heat up several weeks ago, the anti-gunners encouraged big city mayors and their appointed police chiefs to make all sorts of twisted claims about what the right-to-carry measure would do if the people pass it. They appeared repeatedly before an eagerly anti-gun media claiming that the law would allow every gang-banger to carry a concealed Tec-9 or Streetsweeper concealed under a jacket.
The anti-gun mayors and their police chiefs also claimed in their almost hourly anti-Prop B press events that wife-beaters and violent youthful offenders would be licensed to carry concealed if the law passed.
This kind of outlandish propaganda was designed not just to frighten uncommitted voters into saying "No" to Prop B, but to force the pro-gunners into answering the charges rather than explain what Prop B would actually do. It also softens the public up for future anti-gun legislation. The chief counter-argument is that all of the predictions of the anti-gunners have been proven wrong in every other state which has passed right-to-carry laws in the past dozen years.
For the most part, however, the pro-Prop B forces refused to be whipsawed and kept to their message, which basically has two main themes.
The first is that 230 million Americans already live in the 43 states that have some kind of concealed carry law, whether "shall-issue" or discretionary. This message is linked to the question: why should Missourians have any less rights than the residents of other states?
The second is that more than 2,000 police officers across the state recommend a "Yes" vote for Proposition B. And police officers who speak on behalf of Prop B explain how legally armed citizens can protect themselves and their loved ones, and can often help police as they have done repeatedly in the past.
Beer and Sports Events
But that hasn't ended the whipsawing by powerful politicians and elitists like Gov. Carnahan. When Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc., one of the nation's largest breweries and a major employer in Missouri, came out publicly in favor of Prop B (See Readers' Forum letter on Page 4), the anti-gunners moved quickly to counter that gutsy decision by Anheuser-Busch. They got the major professional sports leagues to put out statements opposing Prop B because it would allow licensed people to carry concealed firearms into stadiums and arenas, even though the law would allow businesses to post their properties against concealed carry.
The anti-gunners are sticking to their scare tactics as the campaign for Prop B goes into its final days. Their ads still show pictures of "scary" guns which are already banned by the 1994 Crime Bill, and they continue to claim that prohibited persons will be allowed to carry and endanger the public.
As in any political campaign, there is no way to block the dishonesty of your opponents, especially when the media is on the same side as the people telling lies. On the other hand, if Missouri really is the "Show-Me" state, its voters may view all of the incredible claims of the anti-gunners with great suspicion. If so, they will approve Proposition B and give Missourians the same right-to-carry laws that Prof. John Lott says have reduced crime in many other states.
We'll know the outcome of the vote by the time the next issue goes to press.
The New Gun Week is published three times a month by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) on the 1st, 10th, and 20th. Hindsight is a commentary written by SAF President and Gun Week Executive Editor Joseph P. Tartaro. This commentary may be reprinted so long as credit is given to the author and the publication. For more information or to subscribe, write Gun Week, PO Box 488, Buffalo, NY 14209, or call 716-885-6408 Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST, or inquire on Compuserve to John Krull, Production manager-JohnSAF@Compuserve.com or gunweeksaf@broadviewnet.netAlso, check out the New Gun Week at http://www.GunWeek.com