Editorial: Armed and clueless: SC House invites untrained to pack heat

WE DON’T BELIEVE you make society safer by inviting a bunch of people with no training to run around with guns tucked in their pants. On this, we agree with a lot of people with concealed-weapons permits.

The S.C. House thinks differently. The House voted overwhelmingly last month to do away with the requirement that people pass a criminal background check and take a class where they are taught where they can and can’t carry a gun, taught that it’s not legal to drink while they’re carrying a gun, maybe even taught that they shouldn’t shoot unless they’re absolutely certain that they’re shooting a bad guy.

Instead, under H.3025, anyone who can legally purchase a gun could take it anywhere guns are allowed.

Does this make you feel safer? Does this get South Carolina closer to being the place you want to live the rest of your life? As Rep. James Smith, who joined the infantry in 2003 to fight in southern Afghanistan, put it: “I’ve been in places where everybody needs to be armed all the time, and it’s not the kind of society you want to live in.”

Usually, when the Legislature debates liberalizing our gun laws, we hear that a well-armed society is a safe society. And it’s not completely out of the question to believe that there might be some tiny benefit to public safety to have an armed cadre of law-abiding citizens who have been trained in how to use a gun and in what the law requires, allows and prohibits, who are motivated by a desire to help keep themselves and their fellow citizens safe.

In fact, we’ve probably weeded out a lot of people who don’t meet that description by requiring them to pass a background check and pass a course that covers state law on the use of deadly force, handgun safety and storage practices, and to fire a gun in the presence of the instructor. The course doesn’t take a lot of time or cost a lot of money, and frankly under a change made last year, it probably doesn’t teach people nearly as much as they need to know. But it requires effort. And most people simply aren’t going to make that effort.

Another thing about most people is that they are going to obey the law simply because it is the law. And if you take that requirement away, and make it legal for people who have no business carrying guns in public to carry them in public, well, then a lot of people who have no business carrying guns in public are going to start carrying them in public.

We’re not talking about criminals; as concealed-weapons supporters like to point out, those people are carrying guns anyway.

We’re talking about people who simply figure they ought to carry a gun if they can legally do it with no effort. We’re talking about people who haven’t been told where it is and isn’t legal to carry a gun. Who haven’t been told that they’re not allowed to drink while they’re carrying a gun. We’re talking about people who haven’t been taught that they shouldn’t shoot unless there’s no alternative. And yes, we’re talking about people who might lose their tempers a bit too quickly.

And these people are going to protect us? Frankly, the people who ought to be most offended about this legislation are all those concealed-weapons-permit holders out there who take their responsibilities seriously.

There’s little chance that the Senate will pass this bill; senators, after all, say they might not even have time to get around to debating a road-funding bill this year. But the fact that the bill likely will die in the Senate doesn’t excuse all of those House members who voted for such an irresponsible idea.

This story was originally published May 4, 2015 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Editorial: Armed and clueless: SC House invites untrained to pack heat."