The Washington Times today runs the story of Donald G. Arnold, “a Vietnam veteran and president of his neighborhood association” who “was named a ‘citizen of the year’ by Maryland in 2000 for his work with police in southeast Baltimore to stop drug dealers and make the city safer.”

None of that mattered, however, when Mr. Arnold tried to renew his permit to carry a gun that he needed in his work as a private detective and security guard. What mattered was that he was convicted in 1969 of a misdemeanor in a barroom scuffle after a man who spotted his Army jacket called him a ‘baby killer.’

Mr. Arnold no longer can carry a gun on the job, and the restriction, he estimates, has cost him about $10,000 in work he has had to turn down.

[…] Federal law disqualifies a person from possessing a firearm if he or she is convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year or of a state offense