Strange new respect for law enforcement in Wednesday’s New York Times: Campbell Robertson and Timothy Williams teamed for a story from Mississippi, “States Widening Gun Rights Lose Longtime Ally: Police.”
This is the same newspaper whose reporters are waiting impatiently for convictions of the Baltimore police officers indicted (and possibly railroaded) in the death of Freddie Grey. The same paper that has made police shootings of black suspects, like the Tamir Rice case in Cleveland, a subject of intense coverage. Yet now the Times is rushing to defend the credibility of law enforcement, enshrining them with moral authority the paper never credited them with previously, now that they’re a potential ally in favor of limiting gun rights.
Guns in bars. Guns in airports. Guns in day care centers and sports arenas. Conservative state lawmakers around the country are pressing to weaken an array of gun regulations, in some cases greatly expanding where owners can carry their weapons.
But the legislators are encountering stiff opposition from what has been a trusted ally: law enforcement.
In more than a dozen states with traditions of robust support for gun ownership rights, and where legislatures have moved to relax gun laws during the past year, the local police have become increasingly vocal in denouncing the measures. They say the new laws expose officers to greater danger and prevent them from doing their jobs effectively.
The article was keyed on a new Mississippi law to let guns into churches, is one of several that have passed in recent months. And other states that will soon allow citizens to carry concealed guns without permits or background checks.
During the past year state capitals have emerged as a fierce front in the debate over guns. Gun control groups have challenged and sometimes even outflanked the powerful National Rifle Association in the states, but gun rights advocates have won numerous victories in relaxing restrictions.
There has long been a tension between the interests of law enforcement and the efforts to roll back gun regulations, but the conflicts are becoming more frequent as gun laws are expanded, particularly in states with permissive policies. Police officers in Maine and Texas have described coming across people displaying their weapons near schools and libraries, daring anyone to call the police and challenge their newly won rights.
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The objections to these laws are not only about officer safety. Law enforcement officials also argue that creating more exceptions to gun regulations will impede investigations. The discovery of an unpermitted weapon typically gives officers probable cause to conduct searches, but some of the new laws could take away that option. In some cases, this has upended longstanding political dynamics, with traditional law-and-order conservatives, who are championing the new gun laws, questioning the tactics of police officers as overly aggressive.
The police have “some merit to their concerns,” said Ken Morgan, a Mississippi state representative who backed the state’s new law, which allows people to carry holstered weapons without a permit.
But Mr. Morgan, a Republican, added that the police were overstating how much the measures would affect the way they pursued investigations. “A lot of times they don’t consider their own discretion,” he said.
The reporters gave the pro-gun rights side two paragraphs to defend itself via a National Rifle Association spokesman. Markedly absent from the report was any proof of gun crime rising in any of the states that have loosened gun laws.
The police said N.R.A. members across the state had received fliers accusing law enforcement of allying with Michael R. Bloomberg, a former New York mayor, who is one of the nation’s most visible gun control advocates. Another challenge for opponents was that the law, despite containing multiple parts, was widely identified as a church security measure. The success of such a law in a conservative state like Mississippi was practically predestined, they said.
Law enforcement officials in the state said the political power of the gun rights lobby had overwhelmed their calls for caution.
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Local law enforcement agencies opposed to enhancing gun possession rights have generally lost recent legislative battles.
Maine enacted a law last year allowing people to carry concealed weapons without a permit or training, despite the objections of Michael Sauschuck, the police chief in Portland, the state’s largest city.
“It is absolutely ludicrous to me that we require people to go take a test to get a driver’s license, but we are allowing people to carry a deadly weapon on their person without any procedures regulating it,” Chief Sauschuck said.
Robertson and Williams concluded with a stern (and ironic from the Times) lecture for “conservative Republican lawmakers”: Trust the police.
In Texas, where concealed handguns will be allowed in university classrooms beginning Aug. 1, law enforcement officials won a surprise victory last year after Art Acevedo, the police chief in Austin, held a news conference where he was flanked by law enforcement leaders from across the state.
His message to conservative Republican lawmakers, who were seeking to limit police officers’ authority to question people with firearms as part of the state’s open-carry legislation, was blunt.
“You can’t be the party of law and order and not listen to your police chiefs,” Chief Acevedo said.
