What are state legislators across the country doing with concealed carry laws? They are making it easier for people to carry guns any and everywhere, including into restaurants and bars where alcohol is served. Two recent incidents of concealed carry permit holders killing inocent people highlight why pushing guns in every direction in our society is a dangerous and deadly idea.

Last week, in Houston a man fatally shot a middle schooler in the head during a road rage incident:

A man accused of killing a 13-year-old girl during a road rage incident is out of jail and has been given conditions for his release, KPRC Local 2 reported Friday.

Houston police said Richard Calderon, 24, hit the teen’s mother’s car at about 8:20 p.m. Wednesday and then left the scene.

The mother, a police officer at Texas Southern University, tried to catch up to the vehicle to get its license plate number. As she drove by the vehicle in the 14000 block of Fleetwell Drive, Calderon fired shots at her car, police said.

Alexis Wiley, 13, was shot in the head. She was taken to Memorial Hermann Hospital, where she died a few hours later.

Read more here.

And two weeks ago in Ohio, the Columbus Dispatch reported that a man whose “blood-alcohol level was above 0.08 percent” shot a 22-year-old woman in the abdomen, killing her:

Culbertson [the shooter] “went outside, loaded the weapon with a few rounds and fired them, then went back in the house,” the sheriff said.

When Vernon asked whether the gun was empty, Culbertson replied: “‘Let’s see.’ Then he pointed it at her, fired and hit her,” Kelly said.

Witnesses said Culbertson and Vernon did not argue before the shooting.

“I agree with that,” Kelly said. “I believe it was just carelessness with a firearm and alcohol. They do not mix.”

Read more here.

Despite stories like these, state legislators in Tennessee, Arizona, and now Virginia are expanding the places people can legally carry weapons. As we allow firearms to permeate our entire culture more and more, we can unfortunately expect to see more and more of these stories.

Learn more about concealed carry or look at other crimes by concealed carry permit holders.

Last Tuesday, I was in the courtroom as the Supreme Court heard argument in the Second Amendment challenge to Chicago’s handgun ban. As my report for Jurist says, although Chicago’s law likely will be struck down, the Justices’ comments and questions suggest it may prove to be a hollow victory for the gun lobby.

The Starbucks Coffee Company has become the subject of national media attention because some gun activists have decided to wear their guns openly, with loaded ammunition magazines close by, in Starbucks stores in California.

Starbucks says it doesn’t want to be embroiled in the gun laws debate. I don’t blame them for wanting to avoid controversy – but they can’t be left out of it. By choosing to appease these gun rights demonstrators – demonstrators whose antics make many gun owners in our country blush – they have put the concerns of the rest of their customers aside. By allowing guns in its stores, the company is jeopardizing the safety of its customers and employees.

That’s why we have asked concerned citizens to sign a petition urging Starbucks to change its policy. That’s why we’ve posted on our website a sample letter people can sign and give to the manager of their own local Starbucks, asking them to tell the company to change the policy. And we’re just getting started spreading the word about this issue. Sorry, Starbucks.

Starbucks says it is simply complying with the law. But it would also be complying with the law if it barred guns from its stores. Peet’s Coffee and Tea and California Pizza Kitchen, both of which banned guns after these demonstrations began, also are complying with the law. The law allows Starbucks to set the basic rules for its property. The issue is not the law. The issue is Starbucks’ choice to allow guns in its stores.

Starbucks says it does not want to have to bar customers who are abiding by the law. But when Starbucks bars someone who is not wearing a shirt or shoes from its stores, or ejects someone who is loud and offensive, it is barring a customer who is abiding by the law. It is not against the law to dress differently or to exercise free speech rights, but it may be against company policy.

Retail businesses have the right to set policies that go beyond the minimum requirements of the law in running their businesses. Starbucks has a policy that endangers its customers and employees, particularly since there are virtually no restrictions on who can openly carry guns – no permits, no training, no proficiency requirements and no knowledge of the laws is required. And since law-abiding gun owners can drop, lose or unintentionally misuse guns, allowing openly carried guns in Starbucks is bad policy. (Indeed, just this past September a gun activist at an “open carry” picnic was charged with reckless use of a firearm after his gun went off in a parking lot.) As long as it maintains that policy, we will be critical of that policy.

The gun extremist want an America where there are guns everywhere: not just in coffeehouses, but also in bars, churches, parks, banks and classrooms.

By capitulating to the gun extremists because they want this issue to “go away,” Starbucks has made a hazardous mistake. Having seen what the gun pushers demand when they are given an inch, I again urge the company to reconsider its policy.

Ralph Fascitelli of Washington CeaseFire and Heidi Yewman of the Vancouver, Washington Million Mom March Chapter talk to press after a March 3 press conference in Seattle asking Starbucks to prohibit guns in their stores.

After watching the oral arguments [pdf] yesterday morning at the U.S. Supreme Court in the McDonald v. City of Chicago gun case, I did find some things which should be positive for the cause of reducing gun violence.

On the one hand, it is true that Chicago’s virtual ban on handguns appears to be in jeopardy.  Yet that particular outcome has long seemed a near certainty, particularly since the five Justices who voted in the majority in the District of Columbia v. Heller case – which found DC’s handgun ban unconstitutional – still sit on the Court today.

More important, however, is the argument that the Brady Center made in the “friend of the court” brief [pdf] we filed in the McDonald case.  The Brady Center argued that, regardless of how the Supreme Court decides the “incorporation” issue, the Justices should reaffirm the limitations on gun ownership they set out in the Heller decision and defer to the judgments of elected officials who enact reasonable regulations on gun ownership, short of a broad gun ban, to protect the public from gun violence.

In fact, based on the comments that I (and apparently several others) heard from the bench yesterday, the Justices seemed to express a consensus reinforcing the Court’s strong language in Heller that reasonable restrictions on gun ownership are “presumptively lawful.”

As Justice Antonin Scalia – author of the majority opinion in Heller – reminded gun advocate attorney Alan Gura, “we find what the minimum constitutional right is and everything above that is up to the States.”

If the Court’s opinion in McDonald bears out this impression, then law enforcement officials and our communities will be safer for it.

In practical terms, such a result would mean that most common sense restrictions on gun ownership would withstand Second Amendment scrutiny, including: Brady criminal background checks on all gun sales including at gun shows; restrictions on civilian access to military-style assault weapons; prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons; limits on bulk purchases of handguns to cut gun trafficking; and prohibitions on guns in bars, airports, public parks, college campuses and churches.

This broad deference to public safety policy decisions of state and local officials has been policy for the last 220 years of American history, and should continue to be so in the future.

In the two years since the Heller decision, courts throughout the country have rejected the arguments of gun criminals and the gun lobby that the Second Amendment enshrines their “any gun, anywhere, any time” agenda.  Yesterday the Justices, both conservative and liberal, appeared to agree.

While everything obviously depends on what the Supreme Court actually writes in its final opinion, it appears that a majority of the Justices will say the Second Amendment allows Americans to have nearly all of the strong, common sense gun laws that they want and need to help protect their communities.

Like everyone else, I will be awaiting with great interest the Court’s decision in June.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

Tomorrow the Supreme Court hears oral argument in McDonald v. City of Chicago, its second landmark Second Amendment case in two years.  The issue in McDonald is whether the new right to possess guns in the home for self-defense applies to states and localities through the Fourteenth Amendment. 

In an article for today’s National Law Journal, I argue that even if the Supreme Court decides in favor of incorporation, and strikes down Chicago’s handgun ban, the Court should reaffirm the broad power of states and local governments to enact strict gun regulations because the Second Amendment is “the most dangerous right.” 

The article can be found at the National Law Journal.

For more information, see Dennis Henigan’s new book, Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy.