Maybe I missed it. But in scanning a variety of media coverage of the man who seems to have successfully committed suicide by police at the Crawford County Courthouse Tuesday, I learned of his divorce, his job, his bankruptcy and even a detailed recitation of the record of his history of holding a state boiler operator permit.

Somehow, the various reports appear to have omitted that James Ray Palmer was one of the background-checked (and, we are constantly assured, always law-abiding) holders of a concealed carry permit from the state of Arkansas. He had a couple of concealed handguns with him, along with an assault rifle, when he shot up the courthouse in Van Buren.

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His concealed weapons were not permitted by law INSIDE the courthouse, of course. A gun nut suggested here yesterday that problems such as these could be solved by making possession of concealed weapons legal inside courthouses, too. Well. The occasional eruption of a permit holder in acts such as these — don’t forget the bomb-plot doctor was a concealed carry permittee, too — are worth remembering (and noting in news articles) because of just such legislative propositions.

SPEAKING OF GUN NUTTERY: A judge has blocked a Florida law that abridges free speech rights of doctors by preventing them from asking patients about guns. What’s next? Bloggers who write about carry permits?

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