"The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right."
-- Nunn v. State (Georgia, 1846)
Please see the Action Item at the bottom of this alert. HB 473 may be the only pro-gun-rights bill this session that still has a significant chance of passing, but it's being vigorously opposed by the University of Utah, so we need to all contact our legislators on this one. The more they hear from you, the better the chance that the bill will pass.
HB 473, sponsored by Rep. Curt Oda, clarifies the existing law regarding the open carrying of loaded firearms. Our interpretation of the existing law is that this is already legal if you have a concealed-weapon permit. Disclaimer: We’re not lawyers. We’re just regular people. So please consult with an attorney or read the relevant sections of the Utah Code yourself before openly carrying a firearm.
A number of gun owners in Utah over the past year have been harassed by law-enforcement officers for openly carrying firearms, even though they were doing so in a manner that complies with state law. For example, a Salt Lake City police lieutenant harassed David Nelson (a gun-rights activist with a concealed-weapon permit) last year when Mr. Nelson chose to openly carry an unloaded firearm to an event that was being held in a public park. We believe that Mr. Nelson’s actions would have been legal in this particular location even without a concealed-firearm permit, since the weapon was unloaded and carried openly. There should have been no doubt about the legality of Mr. Nelson’s actions in this case. In fact, given that Mr. Nelson had a permit, we believe that it would have still been legal had the weapon been loaded (but we’re not lawyers). But even though he "played it safe" by keeping his weapon unloaded, the police lieutenant seemed to be completely unfamiliar with the law and harassed Mr. Nelson at length. See Alert #274 and Alert #275 for a detailed account of this incident. Fortunately, Mr. Nelson persevered and explained the law to the Salt Lake Chief of Police, who subsequently sent him a letter of apology.
One of the advantages of HB 473 is that it clears up a portion of the existing law and makes it even less unambiguous than we think it already it. We support this bill simply because we are tired of having to explain the law to the police and to other authorities.
The Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification is a case in point. They didn’t seem to have an answer when we asked them last year whether the open carrying of a self-defense weapon (either loaded or unloaded) was legal with a permit. The bureaucrat we spoke with simply asked, in astonishment, "Why would anyone want to do that?" An assistant at the Attorney General’s office issued an opinion recently indicating that loaded firearms carried by permit holders must always be kept concealed. GOUtah! disagrees with his interpretation of the law (but we’re not lawyers).
GOUtah!’s opinion is that if you have a right to carry a firearm, you should have a right to choose whether to do so openly or concealed. While we don’t believe you should be required to have a permit to carry a loaded and/or concealed firearm, we must resign ourselves to the fact that for the time being the law requires you to have a such a permit. But the permit law, as we read it (we’re not lawyers), seems to indicate that you can choose whether to carry openly or concealed if you have a permit. It is our opinion that HB 473 just makes this part of the law more explicitly clear so that there will be no way for even the most boneheaded government authority to misconstrue it.
Carrying a weapon without a permit is a much more complicated matter which we won’t go into here. There’s a somewhat complicated law that restricts the carrying of loaded weapons and another somewhat complicated law that restricts the carrying of concealed weapons. A concealed-firearm permit, according to our reading of the Utah Code, simply exempts you from those two laws (although there are certain places where it’s illegal to carry even if you have a permit).
Arizona allows you to openly carry a loaded firearm without a permit, and has done so for years. Arizona did this even before they started issuing concealed-weapon permits in that state. You could carry a loaded firearm openly on your person or in your car, but it was a crime to conceal your firearm back then. Back in the days before Arizona initiated a "shall-issue" permit law, a significant number of Arizona residents carried their guns openly. The open carrying of firearms in Arizona does not seem to have caused any problems in that state.
Unfortunately, the administrators at the University of Utah are "up in arms" about HB 473 because they’re terrified of the possibility that some law-abiding permit-holder might choose to openly carry a self-defense weapon on campus. They don’t seem to think this will cause problems off-campus, but they seem to think that a college campus is a magical mystical place that somehow deserves to be exempt from the laws that govern the rest of state. Given the fear-mongering of these academic administrators, GOUtah! encourages you to contact your Utah State Representative today and encourage him to support HB 473.
HB 247 Substitute, Rep. David Litvack’s anti-gun "Dating Violence" bill, was defeated on the floor of the House of Representatives by a vote of 37 to 32. It was defeated, according to The Salt Lake Tribune, after Rep. Mike Noel of Kanab gave a speech on the House floor in which he expressed concerns about "possible firearms restrictions" contained in the bill.
For more details, [click here].
This is a significant victory for gun owners. Although GOUtah! opposed this bill from the beginning, it sailed through the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee by a wide margin, with only Reps. Michael Morley and Curt Oda opposing it, and with Rep. Rebecca Lockhart absent. All 8 remaining committee members supported it.
Thanks to those of you who contacted your legislators to encourage them to oppose this bill. And thanks to Reps. Noel, Oda, and Morley for taking a principled stand against it.
At the federal level, it appears that the longstanding ban on firearms in national parks may soon come to an end.
The current gun policy of the National Park Service requires that your firearm be unloaded, disassembled, and locked up at all times while you are in a national park, with the possible exception of Denali National Park in Alaska. However, according to a press release from the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, the Secretary of the Interior (who oversees the National Park Service) has proposed a new gun policy for national parks. "Under this proposal, federal parks and wildlife refuges will mirror the state firearm laws for state parks," according to NRA’s chief lobbyist, Chris Cox.
It is our understanding that each national park will have its own gun policy, and that this policy will reflect the laws of the host state regarding firearms in state parks. Thus, as far as we can tell, if the new policy gets implemented as planned, you’ll be able to take your firearm into any of Utah’s 5 national parks as long as you’re in compliance with Utah’s gun laws. However, other states may have different laws, resulting in different rules in the national parks located in those states. Presumably, each national park will post its firearm rules.
This proposed policy change was made at the behest of 51 U.S. senators who petitioned the Secretary of the Interior to make these changes. We wish to thank U.S. Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho for spearheading this effort. We wonder why Utah’s own U.S. Senators Hatch and Bennett did not spearhead it.
According to a press release issued by Sen. Crapo’s office, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has informed him that the new policy will be drafted by the end of April, after which there will be a period to allow public comment before the Secretary makes a final decision as to whether to implement the new policy. So we’re not there yet. However, we’re excited about this progress. GOUtah! has been working for this sort of policy change for several years now.
Please contact your Utah State Representative and ask him to support HB 473. You can obtain your representative’s e-mail address and home phone number by [clicking here]. If you send e-mail, please include a brief summary of your main message in the "subject" header, as legislators receive lots of e-mail and they might not open every message but they can at least scan the subject line. You might say something like "Please support HB 473" or anything else you can come up with that gets the message across in a few words. A fax or a phone call or a letter mailed out today will actually be more effective than an e-mail, but e-mail is certainly better than nothing.
Important note: If you hold ANY kind of office in your representative’s political party, such as being a delegate to that party’s convention or a precinct chairman or anything of that sort, please mention this at the beginning of your message.
Utah State House of Representatives
"The right of any person to keep or bear arms ... shall not be called in question." This statement is Article I of the Montana state constitution and was part of the Montana statehood contract with the Federal government in 1889. Now 39 elected Montana officials have signed a resolution declaring that a court ruling of the Second Amendment is a right of states and not of individuals would violate Montana's compact. They have forwarded this resolution to the U.S. Supreme Court in the soon to be heard oral argument in District of Columbia v. Heller, the appeal of a federal court decision striking down the District's gun-ownership ban on Second Amendment grounds.
This was first reported in a WorldNetDaily article titled "'Any person' has right to gun, state says, Montana claims 2nd Amendment questions already resolved" posted on 20 February 2008. A similar article appeared in The Washington Times on 25 February 2008 titled "Montanans insist on gun rights".
When Montana agreed to become part of the Federal union of states in 1889 there was no such entity as the National Guard. They wanted to ensure the right of their citizens to keep & bear arms, as was guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States, as an individual right. Contrary to the hoplophobe position, the right to keep and bear arms has always been an individual right.
In an editorial titled "Common Sense 101: Guns don't belong in plain view in classrooms" on 23 February 2008 The Salt Lake City Tribune once again proclaimed gloom and doom if HB 473, the "open carry" bill, was passed. Perhaps you will recall their similar predictions of mayhem and carnage if Utah switched their CCW regulations to a "shall issue" position. Their predictions were wrong, as is their fear of "open carry", even on college campuses. Somehow, they seem to believe that the mere sight of a firearm is a threat. Those are "bad" objects that should be kept out of sight to the more sensitive souls in academia. The fact that the "Gun Free Zones" at Trolley Square an Northern Illinois University didn't prevent bad people from violating the rules seems to be lost on the hoplophobes at The Tribune.
"Concerning the story 'Bill would allow concealed-weapons permit holders to carry firearms openly' (Tribune, Feb. 21), it sounds like a throwback to the days of the good old Wild West. The legislators pushing this bill should go one step further and establish an "OK Corral" in the state. It would be a place where gun-toters could practice shooting at each other."
-- Richard Stauffer, in a letter printed in The Salt Lake Tribune, 24 February 2008.
"Pamela Beheshti asks whether she alone believes that restricting access to firearms will result in fewer shootings ('No more guns,' Forum, Feb. 21). No, she isn't alone, but then again, a lot of people believe silly things. If Congress or the Utah Legislature were to pass a law restricting guns, then only law-abiding citizens would be unable to own guns.
Beheshti states that 'it is my right to live without the fear that I am going to be killed sitting in a classroom or at my desk at work.' Well, is it my right to live without fear that you may one day hit me with your car? If so, we should ban cars and quickly - they kill more people than guns.
Better yet, show me where the 'right to live without fear' exists? Is it in any founding document? Have we passed such a law? If so, let's ban olives, as I fear my wife might put them in my dinner one evening."
-- Jeremy Roberts, in a letter printed in The Salt Lake Tribune, 25 February 2008.
"I find it extremely difficult to believe that Steven Kazmierczak, the gunman at Northern Illinois University, was capable of the academic accomplishments the news media have given him credit for.
This sick individual obviously cannot read. That, or Northern Illinois University failed to place its 'gun-free zone' placards prominently enough."
-- Frank Robertson, in a letter printed in The Salt Lake Tribune, 25 February 2008.
"A collective rights decision in [the pending court case] Heller would not only violate Montana's contract for statehood, but also Montana's customs, culture and heritage. We hope the Supreme Court will recognize and credit the contract argument, an argument unmentioned in any of the briefs submitted in the Heller case."
-- Gary Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, in an article posted on WorldNetDaily, 20 February 2008.
Date:
From:
To:
Dear Representative :
As an active voter and gun owner living in your district, I encourage you to vote for HB 473, Rep. Curt Oda’s bill that clarifies the existing law regarding the open carrying of self-defense weapons by permit-holders.
The open carrying of firearms by permit-holders is already legal according to my reading of the Utah Code, but some law-enforcement agencies and other government entities are unaware of this fact, and a number of permit-holders have been harassed by law-enforcement officers for legally carrying unconcealed firearms, even though these individuals had "gone the extra mile" by keeping their self-defense weapons unloaded (which would make them legal even without a permit, in most circumstances).
Also, I’m concerned that the Bureau of Criminal Identification may inappropriately revoke a person’s concealed-firearm permit merely because that individual chooses to legally carry his self-defense weapon unconcealed or because his weapon is inadvertently exposed (by the wind blowing his jacket open, for example). BCI, in my view, does not seem to understand the existing law. HB 473 would merely clarify the existing law and make it unambiguously and explicitly clear what’s legal and what’s not.
Please contact me after the vote and let me know how you voted on HB 473. Thanks for taking time to consider my views on this important legislation.
Sincerely,
That concludes the GOUtah! Political and Legislative Alert #289 for 27 February 2008. We hope this information will be of assistance to you in defending your firearms rights.
Remember that getting this information is meaningless unless You Act On It Today. If you just read it and dump it in the trash, your gun rights, and the gun rights of future generations go in the trash with it. Get involved, get active and get vocal!
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