Recently we learned that a convicted killer in one of the most notorious school massacres in American history tried to get a permit to carry a concealed handgun.

Arkansas resident Drew Douglas Grant applied for a concealed carry permit on October 7, according to reports. Authorities said they discovered that his application omitted some information – in particular, the time he spent incarcerated in a Federal penitentiary.

Yet it was the set of fingerprints that Grant had to provide to the police, pursuant to Arkansas’ licensing regulations, that proved key to discovering his true identity.  Grant’s prints matched those from one of the shooters at the Westside Middle School massacre in Jonesboro, Arkansas over 10 years ago – the fingerprints of Andrew Golden.

Together with an accomplice, Golden killed four students and a teacher and wounded 10 others at the school in 1998.  Golden, who was 11 years-old at the time, had changed his name to Grant. Golden was caught because Arkansas gives law enforcement enough discretion to decide that handing a concealed carry license to a mass killer isn’t in the interest of public safety.

The fact that Arkansas also requires applicants to provide fingerprints was a crucial tool that helped the police conduct a thorough background check, leading them to discover that Drew Douglas Grant was actually Andrew Golden.

This is a person who decided to go through legal channels to obtain a permit to carry a concealed, loaded handgun from state authorities, and was properly rejected.

Not too long ago, the National Rifle Association claimed that criminals never subjected themselves to legal means of getting firearms, and that no amount of criminal background checks would make a difference anyway.

• Shortly before the Brady Bill became law, former NRA chief lobbyist James Jay Baker said on CNN: “If anybody in your audience really believes that criminals go into gun stores, fill out paperwork and have their backgrounds checked out by police, they also believe in the tooth fairy.”

• At about the same time, another former NRA spokesman, Richard Gardiner, said to PBS that dangerous people like “convicted felons, fugitives, just aren’t buying guns from legitimate commercial sources.”

• Similarly, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said to CBS News, “The other thing we’ve pointed out is the great majority of criminals don’t buy their guns in gun stores anyway…. They aren’t dumb enough to walk into a gun store.”

Clearly, the gun lobby gives too many criminals too much credit – as people like Andrew Golden and hundreds of thousands of other dangerous people show us every year.

When it comes to Brady background checks, over 1.6 million felons, fugitives, domestic abusers, dangerously mentally ill and other prohibited purchasers have been rejected by the Brady Law in the last 15 years – all of them “dumb enough to walk into a gun store” to buy a gun.

In fact, in the last year alone over 135,000 dangerous people tried to buy guns from licensed gun dealers and were rejected by a Brady criminal background check.

The broader point of the Golden/Grant application is that strong gun laws work to protect the public.  While Arkansas is hardly a model for common sense gun regulation, at least they require taking fingerprints before handing out a concealed carry license to someone.

Other states like Alabama, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and West Virginia don’t require fingerprint checks.  How many dangerous people have they handed concealed carry licenses to because of it?

The key lesson to be learned from Andrew Golden’s blocked attempt is that there are things we can do to make it harder for dangerous people to get guns.  Many criminals – even mass killers like the Jonesboro or Virginia Tech killers – still go through legal channels to get firearms every single day.

Strong, common sense gun laws could help stop them.

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

In the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

…About one in 20 people in Allegheny County has a permit to carry a concealed firearm, state police records show. With 60,000 licensed gun owners, the county has more than any county in the state. Statewide, more than 800,000 people can carry a concealed weapon.

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In other news, gun owners in Pennsylvania were so “afraid” of Barack Obama, the county with most licensed gun owners in the state voted for him 57%-42%.  Obama also won such “fearful” counties as Bucks, Cambria, Centre, and Elks.

Statewide, with the highest NRA membership per capita of any state in the Union, Obama won Pennsylvania by 55%-44%.

Now, did they really vote for the “most anti-gun president in history,” or did they just come to realize the NRA was lying through their teeth?

Either way, the National Rifle Association loses….

Important reporting from Adam Crisp at the Chattanooga Times Free-Press:

Two hundred Tennesseans who have permits to carry loaded weapons may have their privileges revoked or suspended because they have active restraining orders against them, officials say.

That’s after Department of Safety officials learned they had not revoked permits, as required by federal law, from some people served with an order of protection — commonly referred to as a restraining order, said Mike Browning, Tennessee Department of Safety spokesman.

“Some counties had not been informing us of orders of protection,” Mr. Browning said. “It came to our attention that some people who had orders of protection (against them) still had carry permits, and that’s not allowed under the law.”

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What?  Concealed carry permit-holders with domestic violence protection orders against them?

If we didn’t know better,  we might start thinking not everyone with a concealed carry permit is a “law-abiding citizen” after all….

Thank goodness Florida has decent, “law-abiding citizens” with concealed carry permits like Paul Kallenbach to “protect” them from the bad guys.

In the Southwest Florida Herald Tribune:

Paul Kallenbach packed two pistols when he stepped out to buy a newspaper at a North Tamiami Trail convenience store one night in February. He wound up killing a man with one pistol, and being shot twice with the other.

Kallenbach, 41, charged with second-degree murder in the death of Jon Teko Howard, 35, pleaded guilty on Thursday and was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

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The Herald Tribune later commented:

Paul Kallenbach told police he felt safer when he was carrying guns and a concealed weapon permit.

We feel safer knowing that Kallenbach is going to prison.

The Sarasota man was ordered to serve 18 years, the Herald-Tribune reported this week, for a fatal shooting last February at a north Sarasota convenience store.

Kallenbach had a license for the two guns he took with him into the small store. But if he had simply walked in unarmed, as most sensible people do, the verbal altercation he got into with another customer might have remained just that — harmless words.

Instead, it escalated to violence.

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Unfortunately, Kallenbach had to kill somebody before Florida decided not to let him carry two pistols around with him anymore.

Chalk up another black eye for the Sunshine State’s atrocious concealed carry permitting system.

Another “law-abiding citizen” with a concealed-carry permit.

In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

… Mrs. Korbe, 40, is charged with second-degree murder; assault on a federal officer with the use of a concealed weapon; using a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence; and aiding a felon to possess a firearm.

…

Today’s detention hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert C. Mitchell will address prosecutors’ request that Mrs. Korbe be held pending trial because they believe she poses a danger to the community and is a flight risk.

[Mrs. Korbe's defense attorney] disagreed and said that a report by pretrial services shows that there is no reason why she should not be released. Mrs. Korbe has no criminal record and had a permit to have a handgun, he continued.

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