LICENSE TO CONCEAL

IT BECAME OBVIOUS PRETTY QUICKLY to John Wesley Anderson that there were not enough blue forms. Not by a long shot. Four weeks ago, Anderson, sheriff of peaceful El Paso County, in the shadow of Colorado's Pikes Peak, made good on a November campaign promise and adopted the most lenient standards in the state for the carrying of concealed weapons. Any citizen with a clean felony record who returned the blue form with an $85 check stood a decent chance of being allowed to carry a gun, without having to train in its use or even explain why he or she needed it. Anderson expected to hear from people; in anticipation, he had 1,000 five-page application forms printed. He thought the supply would last a couple of years.

He was wrong. The applications disappeared within 48 hours. Anderson went back to the printer; people lined up outside his office and waited. By last week he had handed out 4,000 forms; 1,800 had already been completed and returned. His deputy, James Groth, sat in a room surrounded by them, furiously processing, with no end in sight. "My family has almost forgotten what I look like," Groth said. A bemused hostage to his fellow citizens' need to pack clandestine heat, Groth has been taken somewhat by surprise.

If the passage of the Brady Law and assault-weapons ban made 1994 a banner year for the forces of gun control, 1995 is quickly shaping up as the year of the Great Rollback. With one eye cocked at next year's presidential race, Senate majority leader Robert Dole pledged last week to undo the assault-weapons ban by this summer. So far this year, three states (Virginia, Arkansas and Utah) have joined the four states that loosened restrictions on CCW (carrying concealed weapons) permits last year. Legislation is pending or awaiting gubernatorial signature in 16 states. In Texas last Wednesday the state senate passed a CCW liberalization measure by a vote of 23 to 7. And soon John Wesley Anderson's permit forms in Colorado may be outmoded: this week the Denver legislature plans to consider a lenient limit on concealed guns. "It's a tidal wave," says a delighted Tanya K. Metaksa, head lobbyist for the National Rifle Association.

Nomenclature can obscure the magnitude of this change. When people talk of allowing concealed weapons, there is a tendency to imagine legions of citizens who had previously carried their Smith & Wessons on their hips gratefully slipping them into a coat pocket. But since half the states flatly ban carrying an exposed weapon (and the practice attracts unwanted attention everywhere), restrictions on concealment are effectively restrictions on almost any carrying of handguns outside the home. As the states change their CCW laws, citizens may have to endure background checks and waiting periods to procure their handguns, but most will also be able to remove them from their dresser drawers and carry them on a car seat, on strolls to their children's soccer practices or even (unless the pastor objects) to church.