"...to disarm the people - that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
-- George Mason
Disclaimer: We’re not lawyers. We’re just regular guys. So any interpretation we present as to what is and isn’t legal under the existing Utah Code is done for the purpose of analyzing the potential impact of certain legislation and should not be regarded as legal advice. Whew! Glad we got that out of the way!
HB 473, Rep. Curt Oda’s excellent pro-gun-rights "housekeeping bill", designed to clarify the existing open-carry law without changing it, has been hijacked by anti-gun members of the House leadership (most notably House Speaker Greg Curtis and House Rules Committee Chairman Steve Urquhart) and amended to turn it into a gun-control bill.
The good news is that Floor Amendment 1, Sponsored by Rep. Urquhart and detailed in GOUtah! Alert #291, got killed in the House today. This seriously anti-gun amendment was killed ONLY because individual gun owners like you called their representatives over the weekend. Please pat yourselves on the back. Had it not been for your efforts over the last couple of days, Floor Amendment 1 would have probably passed.
The bad news is that Rep. Urquhart replaced it with another hastily-drafted amendment, called House Amendment 2, which appears to be less restrictive than Floor Amendment 1 in terms of how it treats open and concealed carry, but which is still a piece of gun-control legislation intended, we believe, to needlessly placate the anti-gun administration of the University of Utah. And it will still impose new restrictions on both open and concealed carry by permit holders – restrictions that aren’t in the current Utah Code as far as we can tell. Thus, House Amendment 2 is still gun control and it still needs to be defeated.
HB 473 passed the House with House Amendment 2 attached to it. Which means that if the bill passes the Senate as-is and gets signed into law by the Governor, it will cause us to lose some of our existing rights. And we won’t even gain anything in return. Not a good bargain, in our view.
We believe that it’s too late in the session for HB 473 to be restored to its original form, and that opening it up for further last-minute changes will just present more opportunities for mischief on the part of anti-gun legislators. So we believe that HB 473 now needs to be killed in the Senate. Please go to the Action Item below to see what you can do to help make this happen.
Our initial analysis of House Amendment 2 indicates that it appears to eliminate the 1,000-foot zone around schools (zones in which open carry would have been prohibited by the earlier amendment). And, unlike the earlier amendment, House Amendment 2 defines "concealed carry" to include a firearm that’s concealed in a "purse, handbag, briefcase, or similar object carried by the permittee" (which was oddly defined as a form of "open carry" in Floor Amendment 1). Also, House Amendment 2 does not appear to prohibit open carry by permit-holders on the grounds of day-care centers, pre-schools, and K-12 schools, which was prohibited by the earlier amendment.
However, like the previous amendment, House Amendment 2 continues to prohibit open carry on the campuses of all public and private post-secondary schools, meaning vocational schools, colleges, and universities. Private post-secondary schools are not even given the option of allowing open carry. So if someone sets up a private training academy for armed security guards, with its own indoor shooting range, students and faculty with concealed-firearm permits will need to keep their weapons concealed at all times, even while shooting at the range.
Furthermore (and this could be a real problem), House Amendment 2 requires that if you have a firearm concealed in a purse, briefcase, handbag, or "similar object", you must actually be carrying that object. Which means that if you set your purse or briefcase on the floor next to your seat during a lecture or while you’re in a meeting or while you’re on the toilet at any public or private vocational school, college, or university, you will be guilty of a crime. And what about backpacks? These aren’t even mentioned in House Amendment 2, which means that we’ll just have to hope that a court somewhere, sometime, rules that a backpack is "similar" to a purse or briefcase.
House Amendment 2, depending on how the term "similar object" gets interpreted by the courts, may also prohibit an adult student with a CCW permit from carrying an unloaded firearm in a locked gun case or suitcase from his car to his dorm room.
Right now, as we interpret the existing law, public post-secondary schools (including the U. of U.) cannot prohibit open carry by permit holders, while private schools have the option of prohibiting or allowing it by way of school policy. Under HB 473 as amended by House Amendment 2, open carry (and certain forms of concealed carry, as outlined above) will become automatically illegal at ALL post- secondary schools.
One other thing to note is that House Amendment 2 does not have any requirement for post-secondary schools to post signs on the premises indicating that open carry is prohibited. We believe that if a piece of legislation creates new restrictions on the carrying of self-defense weapons by law-abiding citizens, the people who sponsor that legislation ought to at least have the decency to require the posting of those restrictions, as is the case, for example, with traffic signs at intersections where no left turn is allowed.
Note: Floor Amendment 1 can also be referred to as "House Amendment 1". We’re still calling it "Floor Amendment 1" just to be consistent with our previous alerts. We’re calling the new amendment "House Amendment 2" because that’s how it’s now labeled on the Legislature’s website and we don’t want it to be confused with any floor amendments that might get introduced in the Senate.
Please contact your Utah State Senator and ask him to vote against HB 473. There are only two days left in the legislative session, so it’s best to send an e-mail, or leave a message at the Senate switchboard, or send a fax to your senator at the Capitol, or phone your senator at home this evening.
Your senator’s e-mail address and home phone number can be found [here]. Faxes and phone calls to the Capitol can be made using the following numbers:
Senate Switchboard: (801)538-1035
Fax for Republican senators: (801)326-1475
Fax for Democratic senators: (801)326-1476
Once you’ve done this, you may also wish to drop a brief note to Senate President John Valentine with the same message.
Sen. John Valentine jvalentine@utahsenate.org
With oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on 18 March 2008 in the matter of The District of Columbia vs Heller case, another organization, the Law Enforcement Alliance of America (LEAA) has submitted an amicus brief in favor of striking down the D. C. gun ban. This was reported in an article titled "Who'da thunk? Guns best crime deterrent after all" posted on the WorldNetDaily website 28 February, 2008. The LEAA states "[T]his probably is the largest unified law enforcement statement in support of the Second Amendment ever, and includes nearly a dozen organizations that represent tens of thousands of police officers across the country, dozens of state attorneys general, dozens of prosecutors and a long list of federal law enforcement experts up to and including federal judges."
An amicus brief in support of Washington D.C.'s handgun ban dealing with the historical issues in the case was filed by fifteen professional academic historians. In an article by David E. Young titled "Why DC's Gun Law Is Unconstitutional", he points out some of the historical errors made in the historian's brief. Well worth reading.
Mr. Young is the editor of "The Origin of the Second Amendment," a source document collection cited extensively by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in its Emerson decision and also by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in its Parker decision. (The District of Columbia vs Heller case is Washington D.C.'s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of the Parker decision.)
"If the Legislature passes House Bill 473 and we allow open display of handguns in classrooms in our institutions of learning and enlightenment, we should also encourage students and faculty to bring and openly display spears, stone axes and machetes. It's only fair to those who can't afford Glocks or Smith & Wessons or who prefer different instruments of violence.
But if the bill passes it will be a step back on the path to civilization, not a step forward for individual freedom and personal safety, as its proponents mistakenly believe. It will be intolerable if weapons of any sort are allowed to sully the environment of inquiry, questioning, discourse, debate, and informed tolerance that we depend on in places of learning.
Instead, our Legislature should focus its full energy on banning altogether weapons from schools, universities, churches and places of government business."
-- Guy A. Zimmerman, in a letter printed in The Salt Lake Tribune, 2 March, 2008.
"If N. William Clayton has his way, all of us in the teaching profession should be armed to prevent incidents such as occurred at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech ("Self-defense on campus," Forum, Feb. 28). The state Legislature, in its infinite absurdity, seems bent on providing gun owners with the right to carry their weapons out in the open. However, if you show up in one of my classes and feel you're going to exercise that right, you're also going to run head-on into my responsibilities to make sure my students have a safe learning environment.
An armed student, well-intentioned or not, does not make that venue safe. I will take any action required to protect my 'kids,' excluding packing a gun myself. Given that my college has a policy of no weapons allowed, I hope you would not counter that rule, nor try to express your rights to open-carry your weapons around my students.
But if the bill passes it will be a step back on the path to civilization, not a step forward for individual freedom and personal safety, as its proponents mistakenly believe. It will be intolerable if weapons of any sort are allowed to sully the environment of inquiry, questioning, discourse, debate, and informed tolerance that we depend on in places of learning.
Nothing good will come of it, so let's not test your rights versus my responsibilities."
-- Rob Branch, in a letter printed in The Salt Lake Tribune, 3 March, 2008.
"People who sell this idea that bad guys are going to stop because of one more law are just full of it.
That's a lie. That's a fraud."
-- Ted Deeds, LEAA spokesman, in an article posted on WorldNetDaily, 28 February, 2008.
"Given the unquestionable threat to public safety that unrestricted private firearm possession would entail, various categories of firearm-related regulation are permitted by the Second Amendment."
-- Paul D. Clement, U.S. Solicitor General, in an article posted on WorldNetDaily, 28 February, 2008.
Date:
From:
To:
Dear Senator :
As a gun owner and active voter living in your district, I encourage you to vote against HB 473 (Rep. Curt Oda’s "open carry" bill) as passed by the House. HB 473 got changed on the House Floor from a good bill into a bad bill by way of a hostile amendment (House Amendment 2). The original bill was a simple and well-written housekeeping bill designed to clarify the existing law without changing it. The modified bill as passed by the House actually introduces new restrictions on the carrying of legally possessed firearms (both openly and concealed) by permit holders – restrictions that don’t exist in the current law. Even certain forms of concealed-carry would become a criminal act under House Amendment 1, such as setting one’s purse or briefcase on the floor next to one’s seat during a college lecture if the purse or briefcase contains an otherwise legally concealed self-defense weapon.
This bill, as passed by the House, also represents a needless cave-in to the anti-gun administration of the University of Utah, which has repeatedly disobeyed state gun laws and thumbed its nose at the Legislature.
Thus, I believe that HB 473 in its current form needs to be allowed to die in the Senate.
Thanks for taking time to consider my opinion on this matter. Please get back to me after the session to let me know how you voted on this legislation.
Sincerely,
That concludes the GOUtah! Political and Legislative Alert #292 for 3 March 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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