Posted on 11/22/2002 2:08:36 PM PST by 45Auto
As of today, I am urging all California residents with a clean criminal background who are following the CCW reform saga to apply for a CCW permit, as soon as possible. In some cases, these folks are going to walk into their local agencies and try to obtain the application forms in vain...at which point they'll pull out the copy of the state-standard form they can download from this website. How they'll be treated at that point is a crapshoot. Some will be able to apply; if past experiences hold, some will be threatened in various ways for even daring to apply, some will be pressed for campaign contributions or outright bribes, some will be turned away flat. In as many cases as possible, the reactions will be fully documented in affidavits and/or declarations by the applicants.
Why all this effort?
Because we're fed up.
How these applicants will be treated will have a lot to do with their race, or whether they live in an area where lots of "the wrong sort of people" live. See also the "Expose Project" section of my website, especially the 1995 Fresno Bee article and the statewide CCW demographics data compiled to date.
It's the racist effects of the CCW system as practiced in this state which will cause the collapse of the whole system. The rampant illegality as seen in San Francisco, Sacramento, Marin, Contra Costa and elsewhere is bad enough; the corruption details starting to flood out in enough detail to interest the FBI is even worse.
But it's the racism that California's law enforcement really has to watch out for.
Why? Because the entire CCW system was founded on grossly racist concepts at it's inception in 1923. Because the law has a verifiably racist origin in historical terms, all anybody needs to do to challenge it is prove accidental racial disparity in modern times, per US Supreme Court case law such as Arlington Heights vs. Metropolitan Housing (1977) and Hunter vs. Underwood (1985). This is discussed in detail in "A Practical Guide To Race And Gun Control".
Agencies maintaining a set of "subjective standards" risk the appearance of bias, favoritism or even corruption if the list of permitholders contains a lot of campaign contributors. So to negate that possibility, many agencies try to put in an "objective standard" of "must handle cash or valuables of some sort".
But such an "economic standard" leads directly to racial imbalances, as blacks and Latinos in particular have a much lower rate of small business ownership. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem but because California's CCW system was founded in overt racism, the courts would apply a "strict scrutiny" test to the discriminatory pattern.
Under "strict scrutiny" an "economic test" for issuance would fail because your odds of being criminally assaulted on the streets go DOWN as your income rises, not the other way 'round! Under "strict scrutiny", once the racial imbalance is identified (and it exists on a mass scale in the CCW system, statewide) the courts are forced to ask "is there some other way of accomplishing the same goal"?
32 states to date have "objective standards issuance systems", and it's working just fine there. Some recent news stories coming out of Michigan drive the point home - just over a year ago, that state discarded a discretionary CCW system patterned in 1927 after California's 1923 statute. The results have been impressive - no "wild west syndrome", or "blood on the streets"...not even in Detroit.
This would form the basis of a "less objectionable alternative" during a court's strict scrutiny" of the existing discriminatory system.
In conclusion: state law allows Sheriffs and Police Chiefs to set up objective standards, whereby anybody passing the training, background checks, fingerprints and the like would recieve a permit. Instituting such a system is the ONLY way to completely avoid charges of racism, corruption and cronyism. Such a system can be "sold" in the local media as being necessary to ensure the appearance of full honesty and equality in the department.
Fail to do this, you will risk a PR nightmare as more and more of the state's residents realize what an archaic, "Jim Crow Relic" of a system the common "discretionary standards" are. Misconduct on the sort of scale we're uncovering won't stand forever.
Y'all need to make a choice whether or not you're going to be seen as an early backer of reforms.
Jim March (jmarch@prodigy.net)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.