Today’s Maxim of Liberty:

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."

-- Marcus Aurelius

OSHA (the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration) is proposing a rule change that would re-classify ammunition, smokeless gun powder, and primers as "explosives", putting them in the same category as dynamite. This rule change could virtually shut down the ammunition industry in the U.S. and impose draconian costs and regulations on private citizens who own or reload ammunition. If there has been a recent spate of accidents involving smokeless powder, ammunition manufacturing, ammunition storage, reloading, etc., we certainly haven’t heard about it. Smokeless powder, primers, and ammunition are extremely safe products compared with high explosives. Smokeless powder does not explode. It burns. The burn rate is slow at atmospheric pressure, and only becomes fast when the powder is confined in the chamber of a gun where pressure builds up to very high levels very quickly (i.e., when you pull the trigger). Even loaded ammo burning in a fire won’t explode. The pressure inside the cartridge will build up just enough to push the bullet out of the neck of the cartridge case, at which point the powder will just burn at atmospheric pressure. The bullet will only travel a few inches or maybe a few feet. Thus, powder, primers, and ammunition are not even remotely in the same category as dynamite, nitro glycerin, TNT, etc. But the proposed rule change would place them in that category, at least from the standpoint of how the get regulated by OSHA.

Several years ago, when the University of Utah asked its own Academic Senate to vote to endorse the U’s ban on legally-carried concealed firearms, a press conference took place prior to the vote, during which former U.S. senator Jake Garn showed up and spoke in favor of the ban. He said that "in the good old days", honorable people carried their firearms openly for the world to see (citing the example of a gun rack in the back of a pickup truck) whereas only sneaky people or criminals would conceal their weapons. He said that we should continue this tradition, and he made it clear that he doesn’t like the idea of concealed weapons, especially on college campuses. During the Q&A session, none of the reporters there thought to ask Mr. Garn whether he would be in favor of the U allowing people to openly carry guns.

Ironically, the University of Utah, which has reluctantly agreed to allow legally concealed firearms on campus, still bans open carry. We believe that the U has no statutory authority to do this – at least not in the case of people with concealed-firearm permits who choose to carry openly -- and our own reading of the Utah Code leads us to believe that this ban on open carry at the U is illegal. In future alerts, we’ll provide more insight into this matter.

But it's not just the U that's causing problems with open carry. It appears that many law-enforcement officers in Utah simply assume (incorrectly) that open carry is illegal. Even the people at the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification (BCI), the agency responsible for issuing concealed-weapon permits, do not seem to understand the law.

Several gun-rights activists in Utah have recently taken to carrying openly in a perfectly legal manner, and have had some interesting encounters with law enforcement. In a recent alert, we reprinted the account of gun-rights activist David Nelson, who was harassed by a Salt Lake City Police lieutenant and ejected from an event in which he was participating on public property simply because Mr. Nelson was openly carrying a holstered weapon in a manner that was, as far as we can tell, perfectly legal. More recently, GOUtah! Policy Director Charles Hardy was questioned by police officers because he was openly carrying in a manner that complied with state law while attending a 4^th of July celebration. Mr. Hardy also spoke with some bureaucrats at BCI regarding open carry, who seemed clueless regarding its legality.

One of GOUtah!’s objectives during the off-season this year will be to persuade the Attorney General’s Office to inform the University of Utah, BCI, and state and local law enforcement agencies regarding the legality of open carry.

Follow-up: Here’s an excerpt from a press release issued by Stonewall Shooting Sports a couple of weeks ago, regarding the incident involving David Nelson:

GOUtah! wishes to congratulate Mr. Nelson on his willingness to stand up for his Second Amendment rights in the face of harassment from Lt. Isakson.