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LANSING -- A controversial measure giving most law-abiding adults the right to a concealed weapons permit passed the state legislature easily Wednesday.
The law would add tens of thousands of new concealed weapons permit holders to the 21,000 who now are authorized to carry handguns, backers acknowledge.
It cleared the House by 62-39 and the Senate on a 23-13 vote.
Under the change set to take effect next summer, county gun boards would have to issue concealed weapons permits to applicants who are at least 21, don^t have criminal records or histories of mental illness and complete eight hours of certified instruction.
To gain consensus, a House-Senate conference committee added a list of places -- including churches, schools, child-care centers, hospitals and college dormitories -- where guns can^t be toted. They also toughened requirements by adding lesser crimes and drunken-driving arrests as reasons to withhold permits. Only felons were excluded originally.
Lander Walker, a 69-year-old Detroiter, welcomed the policy shift and will reapply for permission to carry a handgun. "I^m afraid to go out at night," the west sider said. "I^m afraid to go to the store."
Opponents charged that the Legislature waited for its abbreviated lame-duck session, after November^s election, to attempt to slide through the change in Michigan^s 70-year-old concealed weapons law. Until it possibly takes effect next July, county gun boards continue to have broad discretion over who can have a concealed weapons permit.
"What it shows is the tremendous impact the gun lobby has in the state of Michigan -- that they could convince (lawmakers) to go forward with such irresponsible legislation when the majority of citizens oppose it," said lobbyist Joe Dennison, director of state legislation for Handgun Control Inc. of Washington D.C.
A Dec. 6-10 poll of 600 Michigan voters, conducted by EPIC/MRA of Lansing, showed that 55 percent oppose a change in the concealed weapons law like the pending one -- while 37 percent favor it.
Critics include Atty. Gen. Jennifer Granholm, the Michigan State Police, Michigan Prosecuting Attorneys Association, Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police, Detroit Police Department and the 14,000-member Michigan Medical Society.
But Walker, the senior citizen in Detroit, believes citizens "should have the right to defend themselves." Wayne County officials turned him down for a permit three months ago, even though he has no criminal record.
"They told me I had to be robbed" to get a permit, he said. "I told them I^d be dead before I got one. ... I listen to a police scanner. Every night somebody is kicking elderly people^s doors in."
The House and Senate conferees added a $1-million state appropriation to the bill for free trigger locks, permit application kits and a computerized state police list of concealed weapons holders.
By adopting a "shall-issue" approach to gun permits, rather than the "can issue" policy now in effect, Michigan will join 31 other states with similar laws -- including neighboring Indiana. Two other nearby states, Ohio and Illinois, are among seven that prohibit concealed weapons.
Macomb is easier
In Michigan, Macomb County already operates as if there were a shall-issue law, under an interpretation by Prosecutor Carl Marlinga. Macomb has issued nearly half the state^s unrestricted concealed weapons permits -- meaning holders can carry them most places.
The organization Brass Roots, which supports gun rights, says six other counties now also operate their gun boards that way.
Nationally, the concealed weapons debate has been unrelenting. Yet there^s still wide disagreement over the relationship between gun restrictions and shooting injuries or deaths.
Some national medical organizations say society should focus more on attitudes that lead to violence. Others argue that the widespread availability of guns inevitably results in injury and death, and that lax gun laws will only make things worse.
An in-depth Detroit News project recently found that guns were involved in $33 million worth of the $210 million cost to treat violent injuries in southeast Michigan during the last two years. The late November report noted that wounds paralyze 20,000 people a year and that more than half the nation^s 50,000 homicides and suicides each year involve guns.
Suicide warnings
Heather Irish, who works in Lansing with a state group called Mental Illness Needs Discussion Sessions (MINDS), warned that the suicide rate could rise as it become easier to own a handgun legally.
"The bills state that they will not sell to people who have been treated for mental illnesses," Irish said. "What about those who are untreated? The vast majority of people who commit suicide are suffering from a mental illness, usually depression. Many are not seeking help.
"Putting more guns on the street and making them more easily accessible is a very big mistake."
On the other side, Livonia resident John Sparkman, 70, said crime rates dropped in Texas and Florida since the passage of similar laws.
"Whenever criminals know that their victims may be armed, it will make their thoughts different as to how easy it may be to rob someone," Sparkman said. "I hear so much today about the rights of criminals, it^s getting to the point that they have more rights than the victims."
Two law school scholars, John R. Lott Jr. of Yale University and William Landes at the University of Chicago, studied shall-issue states such as Florida and came to the conclusion that letting more citizens arm themselves actually reduces crime.
That study, often mentioned by gun lobbyists, showed that violent crime rates consistently fall in states that have adopted right-to-carry laws since 1987. Lott says national polls show that people use guns against criminal attacks 760,000 to 3.5 million times a year.
Rights defended
"These people who are going to get the permits are not people who commit these crimes," Lott told The Detroit News. "It will have an impact. I think, definitely, with respect to reducing crime, it will be a benefit and some of the beneficiaries are definitely going to be in Detroit."
Critics of his research conclusion note that crime rates have been dropping across the nation anyway.
There has been a U.S. trend in recent decades toward adoption of "shall-issue" laws -- under pressure, opponents say, from vocal gun owners and groups like the National Rifle Association or Michigan Coalition of Responsible Gun Owners. Part of the rationale has been that county gun boards dispense permits unevenly -- denying ordinary citizens while routinely granting permission to the wealthy and politically well-connected.
But Handgun Control points out that no new states have joined the shall-issue group since 1996 before Michigan^s current action and that Missouri voters turned down such a change in 1999.
Uploaded: 12/14/2000
Uploaded: 12/14/2000