Concealed-carry backers insist on secrecy terms
By PATRICK MARLEY
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Posted: March 17, 2006
Madison – If a concealed-weapons bill makes its way into law in Wisconsin, people likely won’t be able to find out if their neighbors, co-workers or ex-spouses are packing guns.
The two most recent versions of the bill that have made it through the Legislature had secrecy provisions. Both those bills cleared the Republican-led Legislature, but were vetoed by Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle. Lawmakers have pledged to push a new version forward after the November elections – with the secrecy measure intact.
“When you’re talking about something that has the potential to kill another human being, that absolutely should be public,” said Rep. Jon Richards (D-Milwaukee), an opponent of the bill.
“If we’re going to have concealed weapons as a society, I think we should be able to track who has them.”
But advocates of concealed weapons say the provision is needed to maintain the privacy of permit-holders and to protect the public from criminals. Supporters say the law will work best if criminals do not know who is carrying concealed weapons because they will fear that any potential victim may be carrying a gun.
State Sen. Dave Zien (R-Eau Claire), one of the bill’s authors, said crooks would go after people who don’t have permits if the state made public the names of people allowed to carry concealed weapons.
“If I’m a criminal, I’m looking for an easy pushover to rob your wallet or plunder your home,” he said.
But Peter Fox, executive director of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, said Zien’s argument “doesn’t pass the common-sense test.”
“It’s such a stretch that criminals would sit down with a database and pick and choose” who to target, Fox said.
Fox’s group takes no position on whether concealed weapons should be legal, but opposes withholding the names of permit-holders. Fox noted that the state’s open records law says government information should be available unless there is a compelling reason to keep it from the public.
“There is absolutely no good reason this information isn’t public information,” Fox said of the names of permit-holders.
But Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, said permit-holders have a “basic civil right to privacy.”
“I don’t think it’s in anyone’s best interest for the names of these permit-holders to be made public,” he said.
He said the “vast majority” of the 46 states with concealed-weapons laws do not make the names of permit-holders available.
In the latest version of the bill, the state attorney general would have had to issue an annual report showing how many people applied for and received permits and how many permit-holders were convicted of drunken driving and other crimes.
A call for full disclosure
Zien said the reporting requirement would prove that permit-holders overwhelmingly follow the law, as gun-rights advocates have long contended.
But Jeri Bonavia, executive director of the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort, said newspapers and the general public would not be able to check the quality of the report by the attorney general unless the names were public.
“I think they don’t want us to track what the permit-holders do,” Bonavia said. “The pro-gun lobby doesn’t want that information out there.”
The Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence opposes the bill on the grounds that it would make women less safe. If the bill were to become law, women should be able to check if their estranged spouses or boyfriends acquire concealed-weapons permits, said the group’s policy director, Linda Mayfield.
“To keep the names concealed is too scary,” said Mayfield, who ran the Milwaukee Women’s Center for more than a decade.
Under the bill, people convicted of domestic violence or who have restraining orders against them for threatening behavior could not legally carry concealed weapons. But Mayfield said victims often are too afriad to press charges or to seek restraining orders.
The Legislature has twice passed concealed-weapons bills in recent years. The Senate overrode both of Doyle’s vetoes, but the Assembly failed to do so by one vote in 2004 and two votes in January.
Both of the bills were amended at the last minute to garner more support. The amendments further restricted where concealed weapons could be carried, but the secrecy provision went unchanged in both cases.
Secrecy provision will be back
Zien and others have promised to bring the bill back with the secrecy provision, saying they hope to add a few more supporters to their ranks in the Assembly. They also note both the Republicans running against Doyle – U.S. Rep. Mark Green of Green Bay and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker – support the concealed-weapons bills.
The secrecy measure “is one of the stronger provisions that we are very, very serious about keeping in,” Zien said.
Zien said making the names public had been a problem in other states because permit-holders’ names were published in newspapers or on Web sites and that they were “barraged” with phone calls from opponents.
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Makes a perfect argument to me.