As the 2002 Olympic Winter Games edge closer, news and entertainment media reports are highlighting everything strange, different or unique about Utah. Alcohol, ski resorts, Mormonism and Indians are all getting the spotlight.

One peculiarity, however, continues to escape media scrutiny: Utah’s unusually lax gun laws. Based on poorly reasoned arguments about self-defense and civil liberties, hard-liners in the state have created a bizarre and unnecessarily loose system of firearm regulations.

In 1995, the state Legislature passed a statute allowing Utah residents to carry concealed weapons almost anywhere they go. Building on that success, the gun-lobby reached its most embarrassing extreme last August when delegates to the state Republican convention refused to leave their guns at home while U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney spoke at the gathering.

The hard-liners won another victory last week when Gov. Leavitt and the State Department of Human Resource Management issued an order allowing state employees to carry concealed weapons to work starting Jan. 1, 2002.

The move repeals a 1997 administrative rule, which banned state employees from bringing their weapons to work.

Proponents of the governor’s recent action say allowing state workers to tote weapons will make them safer. In a Nov. 22 Salt Lake Tribune article, Sen. Mike Waddoups, R Taylorsville, said the old policy banning concealed weapons was an advertisement to criminals who want to attack state buildings. “It paints a target on them,” Waddoups said. “It says, there’s no one there to fight back.”

Waddoups and his allies on the far right express concern that unarmed citizens are easy crime victims because they can’t defend themselves. This concern has no basis in reality. A Nov. 26 Salt Lake Tribune article reported that murder rates in most major U.S. cities (including Salt Lake) steadily declined during the 1990s. The all-out urban warfare described by self defense advocates belongs more in the movies than in real life. Come on. How many state employees really need a 9mm so they won’t get capped on their way to work?

Furthermore, even if state workers did have good reason to fear attack by armed bandits, gun advocates’ proposed self-defense solution would be hopelessly inadequate.

Relying on citizen self defense runs counter to basic political philosophy. The founding fathers believed government exists to protect the interests?namely life, liberty and property?of individual people. Citizens place faith in the government’s ability to protect these interests. People obey the law not because they fear some armed citizen will blow their head off, but because they respect government institutions.

The threat of universal violence is a poor basis for a political system. If citizens were only able to protect life, liberty and property by threatening other citizens with death, America would soon degenerate into chaos and lawlessness. Andrew McClurg, a law professor at the University of Arkansas, noted in 1991 that a person who resists a criminal is eight times more likely to die than one who does not.

If gun advocates are really right?if state employees can only protect themselves by packing heat?then what is government good for? If state workers are that afraid of being murdered, perhaps they need to rethink their administrative priorities.

Clearly, gun advocates’ self defense argument makes no sense. The need for protection is overblown, and the philosophy behind it is poorly reasoned. So why do average non-gun-owning folk like you and me let extremists like Waddoups hijack state gun laws? The answer is that many people who don’t own guns nevertheless believe gun control is an infringement on personal liberty.

The argument goes something like this: If the government takes away a little bit of gun rights, the door is open to taking away lots of gun rights. We’re talkin’ serious amounts of rights. Bales of rights. Buckets of rights. Gradually, the restrictions get tighter and tighter. Pretty soon, it’s so easy to take away weapons that you can’t even own a pocketknife anymore. The government’s autocratic power then becomes unchallenged as citizens completely lose the ability to defend themselves.

This argument, like the self defense argument, fails to recognize modern political realities. The founding fathers provided citizens a safety valve against government excess. It’s called the vote. That’s what makes ours a government for the people and by the people. Elected officials have to respond to the public. If they don’t, they get canned.

Besides, if gun advocates’ argument was really right?if the government was really engineering an armed takeover?I wouldn’t trust Sen. Waddoups and his Smith & Wesson-toting friends to save me. Rifles will be no good against tanks and stealth bombers.

Clearly, ordinary citizens (including state employees) have no reason to carry weapons. Placing greater restrictions on firearms, however, will send the message that in the state of Utah, the rule of law is adequate to protect life, liberty and property.

Along with worldwide media scrutiny, the Olympics may bring terrorists and others who threaten the city’s security. To counter this threat, some state workers will choose to defend themselves with concealed weapons. They’ll do so despite the presence of police and secret service officers who know how to keep the city safe.

As for me, I’ll stick with the secret service.

John welcomes feedback at: [email protected] or send letters to the editor to: [email protected].