Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 22, 1993 TAG: 9301220418
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CIVIL RIGHTS?
VIRGINIA may be destined for economic ruin whichever course it adopts on gun control.Gov. Wilder, you may have heard, recently appealed to the General Assembly to stem gunrunning in Virginia by enacting limits on handgun purchases.
Whereupon the chairman of a group called the American Justice Federation (based in Indianapolis), urged anyone "interested in the preservation of civil rights" not to spend money or time in Virginia if the bill passes.
With Virginians still trembling at that news, the next day a group called Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (whose chairwoman, Coretta Scott King, also has an interest in civil rights) threatened a tourism boycott if the gun-control measure fails.
We lose either way.
The Coalition's threat seems a little unfair, since only one other state currently has a gun-per-month limit like the one Wilder has proposed.
As for the American Justice Federation: A boycott by this group, whose conception of civil rights seems limited to the happiness of a warm gun, ought to be as survivable as the continued proliferation of arms in our midst. Most people probably prefer vacations unpunctuated by gunshots.
But, of course, you never know.
Boycotting is a valid and occasionally useful instrument of protest. It has in recent years been employed in Arizona, after the state rejected a Martin Luther King holiday; and in Colorado, where Hollywood types and others have protested anti-gay-rights legislation passed last year.
What if boycotts become popular as weapons of choice for all sorts of protesters and malcontents? The possibilities are scarcely imaginable:
Paleontologists might boycott Virginia if it rejects legislation designating the scallop jeffersonius as the state fossil. The bill's failure would be an affront to fossil buffs everywhere, never mind the memory of the statesman for which it is named.
Lung-cancer patients might boycott Virginia hospitals, taking their maladies out of state, if lawmakers have the gall to pass a meaningful cigarette tax. (Don't hold your breath.)
Legislators themselves could become targets - with lobbyists and political action committees refusing to replenish their campaign coffers - if the assembly dares impose ethics on campaign-finance rules.
And has anyone considered the economic effects of a gunrunners' boycott? Like other visitors, these people now come from Washington, D.C., New York and elsewhere, spending good money in this state.
If the governor's gun-control proposal is enacted, a lot of them might take their business elsewhere. In protest, of course, of Virginia's infringement of their civil rights.