WHY SLED AND OTHER ANTI-GUN LOBBIES WANT TO KEEP PERMITS THE WAY THEY ARE | 2003-08-02
Permit holding has been tried. Permit holders have done a superlative job. As a result, permit holders today ought to have all the rights that permit holders had back when the police doled them out for political pull.
SLED and the other anti-gun people want to keep the present gun permits because they aren't worth much. You can't carry a gun to and from a restaurant that serves alcohol, so criminals are safe in mugging those people. When the old permits were handed out by the sheriff for political pull, you could carry a gun if you were crawling out of a bar, no problem.
Today's holder of non-political permits can't carry a gun at night to and from a hospital, so criminals don't have to worry about nurses pulling a weapon on them. The State newspaper went ballistic when it was proposed that permit holders be allowed to carry weapons to and from church
The State paper headline was, "GUN LOBBY WANTS GUNS IN CHURCH!"
So if you want to mug people on the way to church, feel free, courtesy of SLED and the State newspaper.
In South Carolina only the weapons rights that go with a badge are worth having . And that's just the way SLED and the police brass want it. They hope that once permit holders will give up on getting real permits.
Then we can go back to the old system where SLED, sheriffs and the police brass gave real permits to those with the political pull to do them some good.
Pro-gun people tell me that it is stupid and dangerous for me to talk about SLED as a state-paid anti-gun lobby. Everybody tells me that. But my whole life has been a string of stupid and dangerous activities, and today the only stupid and dangerous moves I regret most are the ones I was too smart to make.
SLED may deny everything I said above. Their stance on renewing the law on permits is a matter of public record, but I am willing to bet that some of them will deny that, too.
What if I am wrong? Nobody else is going to mention this tax-paid anti-gun lobby, so sometimes you just have to stick your neck out.
I feel someone needs to mention SLED's lobbying because no one has privately denied it and no one will publicly attack it.