Guns in the Minnesota Capitol

A legislative advisory committee set up to make recommendations on how to deal with firearms in the Minnesota capitol is nearing its conclusion.

In Minnesota, firearm permits are common, and there are many permit holders who carry their weapons in public. The law is written to allow property owners to exclude firearms from their property by posting a "No Firearms" sign at the entrance.

The debate over guns is perennial. On one side are those who believe that our society should be disarmed. Only those in authority should have deadly weapons. Private persons do not need to carry, and probably should not even own firearms.

On the other side are those who cherish their second amendment rights, and believe that disarming society is not only impossible, but foolish. Guns are common, inexpensive, and easy to manufacture and/or smuggle. If the populace is disarmed, then only the Bad Guys are going to have guns. There will always be Bad Guys.

The evidence favors the latter, and I am among them.

There are exactly two sensible ways to address firearms at the capitol.

The first is to maintain the status quo. We have a beautiful capitol building, and thousands of people from school children to legislators to foreign visitors tour it every year. Legislative sessions, contentious hearings and protests have been held there in recent years, and I know of no firearm incidents at all, much less incidents that could have been prevented with better security. The mere presence of an unknown number of Good Guys with weapons being present in the capitol appears to be doing what you would expect. It deters the Bad Guys.

The second option is to put up metal detectors and lock doors; to impose thorough entrance restrictions on the capitol. Prior notification of capitol security, increased policing and other half-measures make no sense, because they would be much more effective with the Good Guys, and less so with the Bad Guys. The result would be to embolden the Bad Guys, because their risk of encountering effective armed resistance would go down.  Only very tight security would actually improve security, and unless extended to the other buildings in the complex, including the tunnels and other pathways into and out of the buildings, would be ineffective.

So what will we do - maintain the status quo, which is working, or go the "TSA route" and turn our capitol into a strip-search zone.

Politics normally demands compromise, but in this case, compromise is a very Bad Idea. Just in terms of security, half measures will increase risk, not reduce it.

Recommendations so far from the committee, such as notifying capitol security of an intent to carry into the capitol strike me as just silly. What will capitol security do with such a notice unless they are checking ID at the door? Recommendations like that bring no benefit, and are merely political pandering to those who fear guns.

The situation at the Minnesota capitol is much like the situation at our airports. At the airports, we have gone the "TSA route". We have scanners, armed officials, body scans and long lines. We can no longer meet our loved ones "at the gate". The result has been a steady stream of new threats and new restrictions on travel - shoes, liquids.

There have been no successful terrorist attacks on airplanes since 9/11, and the TSA naturally likes to take credit, but the real reason is not the TSA. The real reason is that anyone who tries to take down a plane knows that every passenger on that plane would immediately beat him to a pulp and he would get nowhere - whether armed or not Tucked into the news has been occasional reports that all the effort is not very effective, despite huge costs (also here). There is also no reason to believe that TSA agents are angels.

The armed unionized federal officials who force us to stand in line do not provide our security. In reality, it is the diligence and sacrifice of our neighbors that protects us. Our security comes from those who take the trouble to prepare and arm themselves, and put their lives on the line to protect themselves, and us - those very same people that some want to disarm.