An Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics has decided courtrooms apparently aren’t dangerous enough. They’ve decided, for some strange reason, that judges should go around packing underneath their robes.
It’s one way to assure order in the court.
The New York state Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics has ruled that it is permissible for judges to pack a pistol beneath their robes while on the bench.
”From an ethical standpoint, there is no prohibition . . . barring you from carrying a firearm while performing your duties on the bench,” the committee said in a decision published in the New York Law Journal.
There may not be any “prohibition” from an ethical standpoint, but from a safety standpoint there is a big one: guns aren’t safe, no matter who’s holding them. Judge or criminal, anyone holding a gun is a threat. And putting more guns in a courtroom, in anyone’s hands, is asking for trouble.
Although it ruled in favor of pistol-packing jurists, the committee warned that judges must ”be patient, dignified and courteous” to those appearing before the bench and behave in ”a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
Any judge who actually thinks he’s safer with a loaded gun under his robes should have been kicked out of law school. The Committee should have stepped up and spoken out against something like this. It may seem trivial (most judges, we’re guessing, would rather not have a weapon with them anyway), but they’d do better to realize the dangers that guns represent, and tell the judges to keep things safe by keeping guns out of the mix.
