Permission to Pack : More than a million Americans are ready to deal lethal force. And they’re licensed to do it. Handgun permits are getting easier to come by--even in L.A.

Permits to carry concealed handguns have been issued to Howard Stern, Donald Trump, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and William F. Buckley. Each came loaded with accusations of official pandering to the clout and cash reserves of their celebrated recipients.

In apparent conflict with his newspaper’s gun control editorials, Arthur O. Sulzberger, chairman of the New York Times, has been licensed to carry a .38 revolver. As have several millionaires, many judges, a wise guy or three, union bosses, two Rockefellers and Tom Selleck.

“These people think it’s wrong for everyone else to carry a gun, but think it’s OK for them to carry a gun,” protests California attorney Don B. Kates Jr. “It is telling the public: Your life is not important. Our lives are.”

Americans seem to be saying something else: What’s good for the well-connected ought to be good for all.

And in state after state, legislatures are returning to the open gun laws of America’s Colonial and territorial infancies with concealed weapons permits virtually for the asking. For about $50, a photograph and fingerprints.

More than half the states now license citizens to carry concealed weapons. That’s 1.5 million Americans ready to deal their own lethal force, instead of dialing 911. Even in Los Angeles, long a leader of hard-nosed handgun restrictions, things are softening.

Credit lawyer Kates, veteran pursuer of human and constitutional causes, who last year filed a suit against the City of Los Angeles on behalf of ordinary residents refused permits to carry concealed weapons. He was joined by other attorneys, identical suits and similar clients.

All won. And in August, after two decades of virtual nonissuance, the uncelebrated electrician, realty agent and toilet paper maker were issued one-year permits to travel Los Angeles with loaded pistols under their jackets or in their purses.

Fifty-eight ordinary Los Angeles civilians, from a retired firefighter to a music teacher, are now authorized by the signature of Police Chief Willie L. Williams to equip themselves with deadly force. All have convinced his department of “good cause,” which means unmistakable threats to their safety from disgruntled employees, angry clients, domestic violence, stalking ex-spouses or menacing muggers.

As word spreads, acknowledges LAPD gun detail Det. Steve Mulldorfer, several hundred Angelenos, most riding package deals with attorneys forging a new legal specialty, are applying for permission to pack.

Mulldorfer says no celebrity permits have been issued, all applicants are considered equally, requests must show evidence of a specific threat and it’s still not enough to claim: “I live in the City of Los Angeles and it’s a dangerous place.”

Litigation, he agrees, “has opened the door.”

Elsewhere, doors are being flung wide:

* Thirty states currently grant CCW (Carry Concealed Weapon) permits to qualified residents. The surge has been stoked, experts say, by more Republicans in government and a heightened public perception that lawbreaking, particularly rape, robbery and assault, is rising and moving closer to the law-abiding.

* In “carry states,” obtaining a permit is only marginally more difficult than buying a semiautomatic pistol to go with it. In general, applicants must be 21 with no criminal record, no history of drug or alcohol abuse, and have attended a state-approved firearms training course.

* Oregon has 38,000 persons licensed to carry; in Texas, the count is 100,000; in Florida, 250,000; in Arizona, 30,000; in Pennsylvania, 360,000; and in all states, permit holders typically represent up to 4% of the population. Or more than 1.5 million Americans. “It’s a tidal wave,” enthuses a representative of the National Rifle Assn.

Not quite. Not in California, where authority to issue permits to carry has historically rested with sheriffs and police chiefs. And where AB 638, sponsored by Assemblyman Pete Knight (R-Palmdale), continues to plod through the legislature.

Defeated in committee last year, Knight’s proposal to duplicate freer gun-carrying statutes in other states will be reintroduced this year. A companion bill by Sen. William Leonard (R-Upland) would loosen existing concealment laws while elevating carrying without a permit to felony status.

“The future [for SB 74] in 1996 is dim,” Leonard admits. But given the current movement of the nation, “I think we’re going to get it in the 1997-’98 session.”

Knight’s plan is to push until his bill is passed. But he is willing to compromise. “I know a lot of people who are carrying concealed weapons [illegally],” he says. “So let’s make them legal, have it [permitted carrying] for a year, make it a felony if you’re caught carrying without a permit, and just see how it works.”

But in the city and county of Los Angeles, law enforcement leaders want no part of trials because, they say, there have already been enough errors. They point to recent incidents in which citizens took law and pistols into their own hands and a tagger, the husband of a neighborhood watcher and a suspected car thief were shot and killed.

“If we never have another gun put on the street, we’d still have too many out there,” says one officer.

Although Chief Williams did not respond to a request to be interviewed, officers within the LAPD say his stand is well-known and inflexible: zero gun tolerance. So in a city of 3.5 million, only 58 gun permits are outstanding. Four new permits have already been revoked for minor infractions by their holders, although police say none involved a shooting.

And attorneys handling the class-action suits believe contempt actions may be necessary before permit issuance becomes smooth, automatic and can be completed without legal intervention.

Los Angeles Sheriff Sherman Block says there are only 400 permits to carry concealed weapons in his jurisdiction of 8.5 million souls, with none issued to the rich and famous.

Block notes that if he were sheriff of a rural county, he would not object to more and easier CCWs. He also believes in the right of Americans to own firearms as long as they observe “the legal and moral responsibilities” of ownership.

“But with the population we have here, with its potential for conflict, with our high level of confrontational encounters, I have no intention of randomly issuing CCWs,” he says.

Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles), a former Army police officer, has South-Central, Pico-Union, Rampart and other risky corners of town in his district. He sees these as areas where “little old ladies can walk the streets with their groceries and feel safe.”

Caldera fights hard to contain the Knight bill because “more people carrying in public means more shootings, more injuries, more deaths . . . a fit of anger, a moment of despondency, and all of a sudden weapons are brandished and the situation, instead of being lessened, becomes lethal.

“I wouldn’t feel safe going into a movie theater and having to worry about who is carrying a handgun. I’d certainly hate to spill popcorn on the wrong guy.”

*

In wild contrast to Los Angeles, tiny Isleton, 45 miles south of Sacramento and once the Asparagus Capital of the World, is enjoying dubious fame as the Gun Toting Capital of the World.

In less than a year, Police Chief Eugene Byrd has handed out 700 concealed weapons permits, enough to arm every adult in town. Permit fees account for one-third of Isleton’s budget. And there are 7,000 applicants in waiting.

In truth, many holders are from other areas of Sacramento County, tugged by Byrd’s fast and loose gun laws.

“The bad boys are very bad nowadays” is Byrd’s response to critics. “Just by walking out your door in this state you’ve got just cause to carry a weapon.”

At the federal level, a bill by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) would make a permit issued by one state--or one town such as Isleton--legal in all 50 states.

“But in this [political] climate, it’s not high on the priority list of my colleagues,” Stearns says. “Maybe next year.”

*

Since Florida revised its weapon-carrying laws in 1987, this particular gun battle has been fought by familiar flanks.

Quick-drawing from the right--and aided by other gun-owning groups--is the mighty NRA, whose $4 million in political contributions was largely responsible for 1994’s power shifts in states that enacted right-to-carry reforms.

“One way or t’other, it is inevitable we will get CCW in California,” says Steve Helsley, a lobbyist with the NRA’s western region. “The system is flawed and corrupt. Not by conscious design [of police]. But it results in their pals and influential people getting permits and that’s wrong.

“Law enforcement is out of control on this one.”

Aiming from the left--and abetted by most law enforcement associations and several women’s groups--is Handgun Control Inc. Last year, HCI lobbying established a federal waiting period for handgun sales and a ban on certain semiautomatic, military-style rifles.

“Yes, you do have a right to protect yourself,” agrees Sandy Cooney, western director of HCI. “But that right shouldn’t go so far as to infringe upon the rights of those people around you . . . when the public safety is eroded by carrying [handguns] on the street.

“It doesn’t make the problem better, it makes it far worse.”

Yet close students of the issue believe both lobbies are overstating their purpose with basic arguments that have become inconclusive.

At one point, the NRA seemed to have proved its theory that concealed weaponry deters crime, when Florida’s homicide rate dropped 29% after introduction of concealed-carry legislation.

Smiles lasted until HCI, working with a University of Maryland study, published numbers showing that Florida’s rate for other violent crimes--rape, aggravated assault and robbery, which should have been decreased by a mufti militia--actually increased 18%.

Less-biased experts only added to the cross-fire and confusion.

They note that homicide rates are down nationally, even in states where there has been no relaxation of concealed-weapons laws. And heaven help the NRA’s public support, suggested another researcher, if it turns out that the national drop in homicides resulted from HCI’s success with establishing a handgun waiting period and the ban on assault weapons.

Or maybe it was the economy? The weather?

“You can’t make an informed opinion one way or another,” concludes James Moore, commissioner of Florida’s Department of Law Enforcement.

Some say viewpoints of both extremes are specious, because nobody in the United States has been murdered, nor have banks been robbed nor people mugged, by anyone with a permit to carry a concealed weapon. They add that criminals willing to shoot police officers aren’t going to worry about the minor penalty for illegally concealing a handgun.

An NRA argument: Victims of American massacres in fast-food shops, post offices, commuter trains and shoe stores would be alive if someone other than their killers had been carrying a handgun.

The HCI counter: Carrying a handgun wouldn’t have prevented the shootings of President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. And they were ringed by bodyguards with submachine guns.

And is Lance Thomas--a vintage watch dealer living in virtual seclusion after killing five armed robbers in a series of shootouts at his West Los Angeles store--staying alive because he subsequently was licensed to carry and travel with a 9-millimeter pistol on his belt?

“That question is almost ludicrous,” says Thomas, 54. “When you’re a soldier, a bullet either has your name on it or it doesn’t. I’m alive because I’m alive.”

But Thomas does blame a national moral breakdown and failures of law enforcement and government for “a proliferation of criminality . . . and criminals carrying handguns.”

“And when a subject is under the gun, loyal, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens, regardless of what laws are on the books, will react to save their lives. With a stick, a knife or a gun,” he says. “Remember, the basic instinct of man, which permeates our lives, is the right to survive.”

Thomas does not strut his stuff. He does not advocate open issuance of permits to carry concealed weapons. He is apprehensive about a “growing sector of taxpaying citizens who have no business with a gun.”

“They don’t understand the fundamental issues that a law enforcement person has to go through . . . specifically, the proper frame of mind, the mental preparedness, and then the legal consequences of raising a gun,” he says.

“And that’s basic irresponsibility . . . posing a danger to themselves, to innocent bystanders by thinking that they deserve a CCW.”

*

Amid all the debates, believes David Kopel, research director for the nonprofit, nonpartisan Independence Institute, a Colorado-based think tank, there are absolutes.

In “Shall Issue: The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws,” a 46-page report published last year by the institute, Kopel concludes:

* “Critics of carry reform have predicted that blood will flow in the streets as hot-tempered citizens shoot each other in trivial disputes. Analysis of murder rates in these states reveals that carry reform has not led to an increased homicide rate.”

* “The fact that permits are available does not mean everyone will carry a gun. Usually, only about 1% to 4% of a state’s population will choose to obtain a permit.”

* “Accordingly, states considering carry reform can enact such laws knowing that reform will not endanger public safety. Carry reform, at least sometimes, allows citizens to save their own lives by protecting themselves against criminal attack.”

Kopel acknowledges that the weight of his report falls on the NRA’s side of the fence. He also is an NRA member, but one who clearly disputes the organization’s conclusions. Kopel insists that his research was not funded, assisted, nor initiated by the NRA.

“I’m a researcher with footnotes who presents statements of fact supported by documentary evidence,” he says. “You make up your own mind.”

While compiling the report, Kopel says he realized that the number of women lobbying for CCW “is two orders of magnitude larger” than for any other gun issue. He attributes this to the vulnerability of women and their desire to balance the odds if attacked by physically stronger males.

He also identifies a “pro-gun, pro-control” group of Americans who dwell between ideological poles. They applaud laws to keep guns from criminals, but are not opposed to gun ownership or carrying a handgun as a tool of self-protection.

Kopel predicts that 40 states will ratify carrying laws by the turn of the millennium. Even California.

“[CCW] is always passed with this flurry of excitement, warnings of annihilation, then there’s a big rush of people to get permits,” he adds. “Then after that, even in states where gun control remains a very hot issue, repealing the CCW law tends not to get very much attention, even from the gun-control lobby.

“In their view, it’s not that big an issue.”

*

Attorney Kates says polls regularly prove that crime has replaced the economy as the Great National Concern. He also believes that the majority of Americans have heard the NRA and HCI on carrying concealed weapons and other gun issues and decided, “They’re both crazy.

“This great majority in the middle want laws, sensible gun laws that represent a reasonable way of dealing with crime and guns. In essence, laws that target criminals without disarming the citizenry.”

James Jarrett heads the United States Marksmanship Academy in Arizona, where the open carrying of weapons is a territorial tradition. Last year, the state passed a concealed-carry law and Jarrett, former LAPD officer and an adjunct professor of justice studies at Arizona State University, began training new permit holders.

Jarrett believes you can teach a chimpanzee to shoot, so half of his 16-hour course is devoted to the legal and psychological ramifications of deadly force because “If you haven’t used deadly force, if you are not intimately familiar with the law . . . you are placing people at enormous risk.”

*

Would aerospace employee David Elliott of Torrance, a retired Air Force fighter pilot and Vietnam veteran, carry a pistol? Maybe, he says. Because he works nights and drives a Mercedes and knows it’s a popular target for carjackers.

“There is the deterrent factor,” he says. “There’s a helluva lot to be said for the knowledge that anybody you bump into might be carrying a gun. So the guy who is going to stake out my Mercedes is certainly going to think twice.”

Television reporter Ellen Lava owned a handgun when she was single and sleepless in Sacramento. It was her going-away gift to a co-anchor when she left for Los Angeles and Channel 7.

Now Lava is protected by a husband and the alarm system and double locks of her home in Santa Monica. She carries Mace, but “I personally do not feel a need for a gun, or to carry a gun. But if my husband goes back to flying for the airlines, I’d buy another gun.”

Public figures who do have permits to carry concealed weapons are generally reluctant to discuss their reasons or carrying habits. Some believe acknowledging a permit is likely to alert potential assailants and neutralize the advantage of concealing a handgun.

Several queries to Arthur Sulzberger’s office went unanswered.

There was silence from Tom Selleck’s publicity agent.

A representative said Donald Trump has his New York City permit but “doesn’t carry a gun, never has.”

From the office of publisher William F. Buckley and his National Review, an assistant’s response was a chuckle.

“I presume he hasn’t turned it in on a certificate from Toys R Us,” she said. Later, after checking with Buckley: “Yes, he still has a gun and a permit.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein obtained her permit in 1976 when she was president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and a bomb exploded against her house.

“I was a victim of the New World Liberation Front,” she recalled. “Then they shot out the windows of our beach house.”

Although a supporter of tough gun laws, Feinstein believes citizens should be granted permits to carry concealed weapons if there is “a demonstrable need.”

Her own license has lapsed.

Feinstein’s gun was melted into a crucifix, which she later presented to Pope John Paul.

Don Buchwald of New York represents Howard Stern. He said he didn’t know if his client had a gun permit. Could you ask?

“Who cares?” snapped Buchwald.

Then he hung up.