Packin' pols

If you plan to visit the Indiana Statehouse next year, leave your gun at home -- unless you're an elected state senator or representative. Lawmakers are welcome to come to work packing heat.\nOne never knows when congressional debates might get out of hand, I suppose.\nIn an effort to increase security measures at the Indiana Statehouse, metal detectors will be installed next year and ordinary citizens will have to give up their concealed firearms at the door if they wish to enter the building. Gun-toting Indiana lawmakers and judges may register their weapons with the Indiana State Police and carry their guns to work, but no other Statehouse employees are eligible for this exemption. \nState Senator Thomas Wyss, R-Fort Wayne, explained that lawmakers and judges are exempt from the weapons restriction to "minimize the people who might oppose what we were trying to do" and block the security efforts. \nSo for everyone to agree with enhanced security measures at the Statehouse, congressional members had to be exempt from the rules? This seems like a local version of national security policies. For our safety, we don't want other nations to have weapons of mass destruction, but it's quite alright for the United States to produce them. We demand that countries disarm, yet we boast the most advanced military power in the world. For us to be secure from attack, we simply attack first. It would seem we have a new, unspoken constitutional right: the right to ignore our own security measures, and, if needed, strike "preemptively." Don't bomb us, we'll bomb you.\nOr in the case of a few Indiana lawmakers: Leave your gun at home, but understand that I could still cap you in the head.\nAt issue is the glaring lack of trust at the core of these hypocritical exemptions. As you have likely experienced among friends, you have to demonstrate that you are trustworthy and reciprocate trust in order to build honest relationships. I can't demand that a friend meet standards that I would personally reject and then expect a healthy interaction.\nBuilding on this aspect of friendship, Danielle Allen, a political scientist from the University of Chicago, suggests that all citizens, even strangers, are "political friends" who must learn to trust one another even as we riskily demonstrate our willingness to trust each other.\nWhile they might not be our best friends forever, lawmakers are public servants who should be in the business of fostering public bonds of trust. But they're doing a pitiful job of reciprocating trust, as this firearm security exemption demonstrates at a local level.\nRather than continuing with paranoia, suspicion and fear, we would do well to cultivate trust and "political friendship." And that begins with recognizing that in public life we all have to make a few sacrifices for the greater good.\nJust don't ask state lawmakers to sacrifice their God-given right to bear arms in the Statehouse. You might get plugged -- Dick Cheney-style.