Investigative reporter Emily Miller applied for a concealed carry firearm permit in the District of Columbia weeks before 12 people died in a bloody attack Wednesday on a satirical magazine in Paris.
The attack was carried out by three terrorists at least one of which was heard shouting “Alahu Akbar” as they murdered editors, cartoonists and policemen.
“Yes, I’m still waiting for Chief Lanier to decide if my application for a carry permit — partially based on a terrorist threat — will get approved,” Miller told the Washington Examiner Media Desk.
She was referring to District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Chief Kathy Lanier, who must approve special requests for permits allowing private citizens to carry concealed firearms for protection. Miller is now chief investigative reporter for Fox 5 News and author of Emily Gets Her Gun.
Miller made headlines two years ago as a Washington Times editorial writer by chronicling the bureaucratic labyrinth required to get a firearms ownership permit in the District, which has some of the toughest anti-gun laws in the country.
“It’s opened the eyes of a lot of journalists, it’s a real wakeup call,” Miller said of the Paris attack.
Miller submitted her application for a concealed carry permit a month ago and Lanier has 90 days to approve or reject it. Miller cited a recent FBI warning to news organizations as one of several reasons for her application.
“The one thing she doesn’t want is for me to be killed after she rejected my application,” Miller said of Lanier.
More than 2,000 journalists work in the District, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. New York and California both have more than 4,400 working journalists, most in major metropolitan areas not unlike Paris. Texas and Florida have about the same number as D.C.
Whatever the outcome of Miller’s application, other journalists and firearms experts are far from unanimous about the value of journalists carrying firearms in newsrooms that might be terrorist targets.
Opinion columnist and former Human Events editor Jed Babbin is not enthusiastic about the prospect.
“Arming untrained journalists is as bad an idea as arming teachers. Neither is, by experience, training or temperament, capable of bearing arms and using them responsibly. Pistol packing reporters, even in news rooms, is an awesomely bad idea,” Babbin said.
Babbin was deputy undersecretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush.
Similarly, Don Ray, a California-based investigative journalist and Vietnam veteran, said he thinks “armed journalists might begin to represent even more of a threat. It’s hard enough pointing at someone with a video camera or a camera with a long lens. [But] if they also believed you were armed with a weapon . . .”
Ray added that he “had no problem carrying when I was a soldier in Vietnam or when I was a law enforcement officer. I hope never to need to carry again.”
Massad Ayoob, law enforcement editor of American Handgunner magazine and a long-time firearms trainer, said terrorists aren’t the first lethal threats faced by journalists, who “are supposed to make enemies” by exposing things others don’t want made public.
“If they are competent and ready, and they got proper training, it would be effective,” Ayoob said of allowing journalists to carry firearms. “It would be sufficient to deter some attacks, but you’re never going to deter them all.”
Ayoob pointed to Israel’s experience in arming teachers, principles and parents to protect students in the wake of a 1974 massacre of more than 60 children and adults by Palestinian terrorists at a school in Maalot.
“God bless Golda Meir, she approved arming them and there have been no school massacres by terrorists in Israel since then,” Ayoob said.
University of Arkansas Law School Professor Rob Steinbuch said the Paris attack could encourage lawmakers to ease restrictions where necessary to enable journalists to be armed.
“Several jurisdictions still restrict gun permits to those with a defined permissible legal justification. For example, an individual in a restrictive jurisdiction who carries cash as a function of his ownership of a business usually is able to get a permit out of concern for being robbed,” he said.
“The events in Paris of today demonstrate why journalists should be entitled to carry permits in those jurisdictions not affording broader carry rights. This would likely require legislative changes to the currently restrictive statutes.”
Getting permits from government officials isn’t the only obstacle to journalists obtaining the means to defend themselves and colleagues.
“An equal problem would be company policies that forbid firearms on company property. I’m a member of our paper’s skeet shooting league in the summer, and on shooting days we are careful not to park our cars on company property. So the issue isn’t exclusive to permit access,” said Jonathan Ellis of the Argus-Leader in Souix Falls, South Dakota.
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.
