South Carolina editorial roundup: Saturday, March 23, 2024
Times and Democrat
March 16
Hoping for best with the state's new gun law
Any adult who can legally own a gun can carry one openly in South Carolina now that the General Assembly and Gov. Henry McMaster have put so-called "constitutional carry" into law.
South Carolina since 2021 has allowed open carry of handguns, but only when the person holds a concealed weapons permit. To get a permit, residents must be at least 21 years old, have eight hours of training and pass a background check.
In approving the legislation, long a priority of McMaster and many GOP lawmakers, South Carolina joins 28 other states that allow open carry of guns without a permit, including most of the South.
While critics argue the new law is irresponsible and will lead to increased gun violence, statistics from around the country offer conflicting findings. But law enforcement has warned of a negative impact, and there is legitimate fear that more guns and immediate access to them could lead to more deadly situations.
Lawmakers think they have addressed key safety issues:
- The law creates stiffer penalties for people who repeatedly carry guns in places where they are banned or commit crimes while armed, whether they use the weapon or not.
- The law identifies places where guns cannot be carried, including police stations, jails and prisons; courtrooms; polling places; public meetings; daycare and preschool facilities; hospitals and medical facilities; and collegiate sporting events.
- As has been the law, guns are not allowed in any privately owned facility displaying a placard barring gun owners from entering the building.
Law enforcement has concerns specifically related to cars, where under previous law it was a misdemeanor to have a handgun in the vehicle unless it was secured in a glove compartment, center console, trunk or secure container. Concealed carry permit holders could secure their weapons under their seat in a vehicle, in an open or closed container in the cab or on their person.
Under the new law, the latter provision now applies to everyone.
As to worries about people with no training openly carrying guns, lawmakers sought to promote permits and safety.
Classes needed to get a concealed weapons permit will be free. The state will appropriate more than $4 million to the State Law Enforcement Division to cover the $100 cost of a concealed carry class across an average of 41,356 participants per year.
The agency is to hire four new employees at a cost of nearly $400,000 per year and spend approximately $152,000 for vehicles and equipment. To inform the public of the new law, SLED will also be funding a million-dollar ad campaign to advertise the new courses.
Only time will tell whether people en masse will be responsible enough to get the training. But they do have incentive beyond safety concerns: With a South Carolina permit, you can carry a concealed handgun in 35 other states around the U.S. Without it, your right to openly carry may be nullified.
We live in a dangerous world. Proponents of statutes such as the new open-carry law in South Carolina say law-abiding citizens are due the right to protect themselves since criminals will have guns regardless of the law. The argument is legitimate, but more weapons in more hands with less overall training on their use is worrisome.
Regardless, South Carolinians will have to become accustomed to seeing more guns being openly carried by more people. A new era has begun. We hope for the best.
Post and Courier
March 19
A good start on judicial selection reform but not nearly enough
S.C. Sen. Wes Climer gave as good a definition as any Thursday of the goal most everyone shares for judicial selection reform: "Any time a citizen in this state enters a courtroom, the only thing that should have any bearing at all on the outcome of that process is the law and the facts."
Mr. Climer, who led the effort to force the Senate to debate changing the Legislature's insular process of electing judges, told his colleagues that the agreement he and 10 other senators hammered out over a week of closed-door meetings included "meaningful and substantive changes" that go a long way in reducing "what heretofore has been undue and outsized influence of legislative politics on judicial outcomes":
- It allows the governor to appoint four of 12 members of the Judicial Merit Selection Commission that can find candidates and even incumbent judges unqualified, ending the Legislature's "exclusive authority to hire and fire judges."
- It kicks four of the six lawyer-legislators off the panel immediately (the two others would remain for two years) and then bars members from serving more than four consecutive years, which means "a couple of legislators" can no longer "entrench themselves so deeply in the JMSC process as to have an undue influence on the judges before whom they try cases."
- It requires meetings of the commission to be livestreamed and prohibits candidates from dropping out between the beginning of public hearings and the release of the panel's report on the candidates - a change designed to stop the panel from pressuring candidates to drop out by suggesting that the public will see unflattering material about them in the report if they don't.
This is one of those bittersweet moments when we're reminded of why so many people hate the idea of compromise: Nobody gets what they want, and those of us who want change, battling people who want no change, will never get anywhere near what we want. That's certainly the case with S.1046, which the Senate will give final approval today after voting unanimously last week to advance it. We want a much greater role in the process for the executive branch - which would control only a minority of seats on the screening panel that decides which candidates the full Legislature can consider - and we want to bar legislators from that panel.
But as long as the defenders of the status quo remain in office - and in this case, they could constitute as many as half the members of the Senate - our options are either less than what we want or nothing. And in almost all cases, less than all we want is better than nothing. (This is where the extremists, including pretty much everybody in the Congress and everybody playing on the national stage, are so completely wrong.)
The failure here isn't on the part of Mr. Climer and the other reformers who settled for so much less than they or we wanted; they made a rational choice. The failure is the senators who refused to allow deeper reforms.
The potential failure is that the House could agree to even less. That doesn't seem likely because House Speaker Murrell Smith and his leadership team have introduced legislation that is very similar to the Senate bill, and unlike the Senate - which started its debate with far more ambitious plans - the House nearly always passes legislation that's backed by the leadership.
Solicitor David Pascoe - who dismisses the Senate measure as lipstick on a pig - tells us he actually prefers the House proposal: It gives the governor a proportionally greater say on the screening commission - 5 of 11 members vs. 4 of 12 in the Senate plan - and gives the screening commission its own staff rather than borrowing legislative staff. We agree those are improvements, as are provisions designed to help judges do a better job and make their campaigning less fraught.
Mr. Smith has indicated he plans to have a House debate on S.1046, which should be a given but otherwise wouldn't be. That process almost certainly will start with replacing the text with the language in H.5170, but it shouldn't end there. The House should make its version of the bill stronger in additional ways: by adopting those Senate provisions that are superior (livestreaming the meetings, making information about all the candidates public, creating a way to remove screening commission members and requiring those members to resign if relatives file for a judgeship) and then by improving on promising provisions in both bills - most notably banning lawyer-legislators from the screening panel and giving the governor more appointments.
The two major flaws with the current system are that the governor is completely cut out of the process, giving the Legislature total control over the third branch of government, and some lawyer-legislators have been able to game the system to advantage their clients and themselves. The House leaders' bill and the bill the Senate endorsed on Thursday reduce both problems, but neither comes anywhere near eliminating either. It's time for the House to raise the bar.