LICENSE TO CONCEAL

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

IT BECAME OBVIOUS PRETTY QUICKLY to John Wesley Anderson that there were not enough blue forms. Not by a long shot. Four weeks ago, Anderson, sheriff of peaceful El Paso County, in the shadow of Colorado's Pikes Peak, made good on a November campaign promise and adopted the most lenient standards in the state for the carrying of concealed weapons. Any citizen with a clean felony record who returned the blue form with an $85 check stood a decent chance of being allowed to carry a gun, without having to train in its use or even explain why he or she needed it. Anderson expected to hear from people; in anticipation, he had 1,000 five-page application forms printed. He thought the supply would last a couple of years.

He was wrong. The applications disappeared within 48 hours. Anderson went back to the printer; people lined up outside his office and waited. By last week he had handed out 4,000 forms; 1,800 had already been completed and returned. His deputy, James Groth, sat in a room surrounded by them, furiously processing, with no end in sight. "My family has almost forgotten what I look like," Groth said. A bemused hostage to his fellow citizens' need to pack clandestine heat, Groth has been taken somewhat by surprise.

If the passage of the Brady Law and assault-weapons ban made 1994 a banner year for the forces of gun control, 1995 is quickly shaping up as the year of the Great Rollback. With one eye cocked at next year's presidential race, Senate majority leader Robert Dole pledged last week to undo the assault-weapons ban by this summer. So far this year, three states (Virginia, Arkansas and Utah) have joined the four states that loosened restrictions on CCW (carrying concealed weapons) permits last year. Legislation is pending or awaiting gubernatorial signature in 16 states. In Texas last Wednesday the state senate passed a CCW liberalization measure by a vote of 23 to 7. And soon John Wesley Anderson's permit forms in Colorado may be outmoded: this week the Denver legislature plans to consider a lenient limit on concealed guns. "It's a tidal wave," says a delighted Tanya K. Metaksa, head lobbyist for the National Rifle Association.

Nomenclature can obscure the magnitude of this change. When people talk of allowing concealed weapons, there is a tendency to imagine legions of citizens who had previously carried their Smith & Wessons on their hips gratefully slipping them into a coat pocket. But since half the states flatly ban carrying an exposed weapon (and the practice attracts unwanted attention everywhere), restrictions on concealment are effectively restrictions on almost any carrying of handguns outside the home. As the states change their CCW laws, citizens may have to endure background checks and waiting periods to procure their handguns, but most will also be able to remove them from their dresser drawers and carry them on a car seat, on strolls to their children's soccer practices or even (unless the pastor objects) to church.

The U.S. has never had a unified policy on who can and cannot carry a weapon outside the home. Observers separate the states' positions into three broad groups. At present, 23 are lenient (Vermont especially so); 11 make gun toting almost impossible; and the remaining 16, which include many of those currently considering a change, give out CCWs to civilians on the basis of a "compelling need," such as a documented threat against them or a dangerous job. Often, need is determined by local judges or police, who can be stingy or play favorites. From 1972 to 1992, for instance, the Los Angeles police department awarded one civilian permit-to incoming police commissioner Willie Williams, before he was sworn in as an officer. In New York City, says N.R.A, spokesman Bill Powers, "Donald Trump has one. But you or I? The judges say no."

The new initiatives would replace that local discretion with uniform--and often more lenient--standards. The proposed Texas rule, for instance, requires applicants to be 21 or over, possess a police record clean of felonies and take 10 to 15 hours of training in the specific caliber of their favored weapons. In addition, the citizen must disarm before entering government offices, sporting events, polling places and private homes or businesses whose owners object. (This last is controversial: the Houston Chronicle quotes a worried citizen as saying, "Let's face it: if you can't carry a concealed weapon into an all-night grocery, what good is it?")

The forces propelling the change range from boringly bureaucratic to blatantly political to high American paranoid. Part of the impetus is the simple desire for clarity. Under the current Texas rules, for instance, if you cross only one county line with your weapon, you're risking a year in jail and a $4,000 fine; cross two (and muddy the jurisdictional situation), and you're likely to get off free.

The CCW rebellion also has fomenters with deep pockets. Susan Whitmore, a spokeswoman for Sarah Brady's Handgun Control, Inc., says, "this is all being driven by the gun lobby." N.R.A, lobbyist Metaksa does not exactly deny the charge; she admits that many liberalization campaigns are "coordinated" out of her organization's Washington-area office and notes that the N.R.A, (which spent some $4 million in the 1994 election) not only saw 80% of its congressional favorites elected; it also scored 85% on the state level. "Many state legislatures got changed," she explains, "and now [they] are listening to their constituents." Or to her. In Texas, where the N.R.A, has run a letter-writing campaign for liberalization, fear has probably swayed some yea votes. Says Bruce Elfant, constable for Travis County and an opponent of liberalization: "It is not so much the money as the threat that they will go after people who oppose them." That threat carries weight: last year the organization was credited with toppling legendary Representative Jack Brooks when he defied them to vote for the Clinton crime bill.

Yet Marion ("Sandy") Sanford, a respected and putatively neutral Austin lobbyist, says, "This is not the N.R.A,; this is spontaneous combustion"--fueled by the same dread that has stoked the success of death-penalty campaigns and "Three strikes and you're in." The desire for self-preservation in the face of an increase in random violence and understaffed police forces can express itself, without paradox, in both an assault-weapons ban and in the desire to pack one's own handgun. Says Gary Huttenhoff, a real estate appraiser who has just picked up his laminated wallet-size permit from Sheriff Anderson's office in El Paso County: "The police take care of the public, not the individual. This is a great chance for people to defend themselves." One of the most potent advocates in the Texas debate has been Suzanna Gratia, who watched helplessly as a deranged gunman executed 23 people--including her parents--at a cafeteria in the town of Killeen four years ago. At the time, Gratia's own .38-cal. was lying in the trunk of her car because she was obeying the current concealed-weapons law, "the stupidest mistake of my entire life."

Can other Americans take a lesson from her tragedy? The question harks back to the classic gun-control debate. "CCW permits are not the answer," says Whitmore. "They give you a false sense of security." She argues that the regrets of people like Gratia are outweighed by the regrets of those who had guns but found themselves outdrawn. And certainly Whitmore would be right to distinguish a tinge of the overheated in another of Anderson's satisfied customers, retiree Bob Chadwick. "I won't come downtown much anymore," he says, grabbing an application for his .44-cal. Magnum. "It's a jungle, and it's spreading. I don't want to become a victim." A national survey recently rated Chadwick's "jungle," Colorado Springs, America's 13th safest city.

Yet if the fevered fantasies of gun owners seem overdrawn, so, apparently, are those of the control advocates. In 1986, when Florida initiated the current wave of liberalization, critics predicted deadly traffic squabbles and cross fire at the mall. That proved mistaken. Since 1987 more than 266,700 Floridians have been granted concealed-weapons permits; of those, only 19 have had them revoked for firearms-related crime. Since the CCW laws were relaxed, Florida's homicide rate has decreased 29%.

That last, striking statistic has turned into an N.R.A, rallying cry. Thrown on the defensive, Handgun Control has countered that Florida's rate for all violent crime went up 18% during the same period. And last week the University of Maryland released contradictory numbers: it reported three Florida cities as having experienced rises in gun homicides since 1986, ranging from 3% (Miami) to 74% (Jacksonville).

James T. Moore, commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, says he has his doubts about the Maryland figures. Yet he also refuses to credit the homicide drop to liberalization. There are too many other variables, from tourism to weather to immigration. (He might well add the 1991 adoption of Brady-type gun-purchase rules, or the fact that many of the homicidal do not bother with gun permits.) "You can't make an informed opinion one way or another," he concludes.

BACK IN EL PASO COUNTY, NOT EVERYBODY is thrilled with John Anderson's new policy. Police Lieutenant Alan Scott of Colorado Springs is worried that "now people will substitute their own deadly force for diplomacy or for calling the police. If a dispute breaks out, will people now use the same discretion that they did before guns?" He ponders all the gun training he and his colleagues have undergone in order to wear the badge. "And if we [still] make mistakes," he asks, gesturing in the general direction of the new permit owners, "how about them?"

--Reported by Sam Allis/Boston, Greg Aunapu/Miami and Richard Woodbury/Colorado Springs

With reporting by SAM ALLIS/BOSTON, GREG AUNAPU/MIAMI AND RICHARD WOODBURY/COLORADO SPRINGS