Fans Praise Gun Shows

Josey1

Fans Praise Gun Shows
Monday, July 29, 2002

Dale Rose, left, checks the guns of Will Milner of Salt Lake City at the entrance to the Crossroads of the West gun show Sunday at the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)
BY KARYN HSIAO
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

The Sept. 11 attacks and a string of child abductions have left Utahns feeling vulnerable not only to terrorists, but also to burglars, kidnappers and even handymen-for-hire.
To counter that lost sense of personal security, Utah's gun enthusiasts say there is one right and patriotic thing to do: Support Second Amendment gun rights.
"There is an emerging recognition that the government cannot protect us in all circumstances," said Bob Templeton, president of the Kaysville-based Crossroads of the West Gun Shows.
About 200 vendors and nearly 7,000 people -- including congressional candidates Rob Bishop, John Swallow and Chris Cannon -- gathered during the weekend for Crossroads of the West's first summertime gun show, held at the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy.
"These shows are family-oriented and make sure that people have what they need to protect themselves," said Tracy Olcott of Crossroads of the West, a company that draws about 50,000 Utahns each year with five shows.
Olcott says gun sales have increased since Sept. 11, adding quickly that Crossroads of the West requires full state and federal background checks before finalizing a gun sale.
Curt Oda, co-founder of the Concealed Weapon Permit Holders Association, says Utahns who bought firearms in the past year because they no longer felt safe should get proper training to prevent misuse and accidents.
"It's a proven fact that criminals go to areas where they think they are least likely to be shot," said Oda. "But before you go out and buy a gun, you should go to the range and learn about shooting, so you can buy a weapon that matches your hand size, strength and abilities."
Edward Smith is a gun dealer and collector, and he has certified more than 3,000 concealed weapon holders in Utah. Smith says anti-gun factions are using the war on terrorism to infringe on Second Amendment rights and on gun shows.
"They want people to think shows are where hoodlums get their weapons," said Smith. "But I can't think of anything more patriotic than coming here and collecting vintage American guns."
Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who fought against the Brady Bill, agreed the show was an unlikely lair for criminals with its exhibits of leather holsters, camouflage clothes and backpacks, and bumper stickers reading "Proud Member of the Taliban Hunting Club," "Assassinate Terrorists," and "Charlton Heston Is My President."
"The notion that terrorists are getting firearms at gun shows is just a farce," Mack said. "The term used to be criminals -- and now it's terrorists. That's exploiting Sept. 11."
Mack pauses to straighten a T-shirt that reads "The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security."
"We've already seen what happens when we tell people that we have no guns on our airplanes," Mack said, referring to the Sept. 11 hijackings. "So we can either be an easy target, or defend ourselves. And I want every terrorist and kidnapper out there to believe we're all armed."
Crossroads of the West will hold its next gun show Sept. 21-22 at the South Towne Expo Center.
khsiao@sltrib.com

http://www.sltrib.com/07292002/utah/757403.htm


"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Josey1

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Armed While Utahn
An all-encompassing controversy.

By Jason Steorts



hen, earlier this year, Utah attorney general Mark Shurtleff attended a hockey game in Salt Lake City, his experience was similar to what any other Utahn might go through: Before enjoying the game, he arrived at the sports arena, gave his ticket - and checked his concealed handgun with security.
About 42,000 Utahns, or three percent of the state's population, hold concealed-weapon permits. And Shurtleff - who carries his gun in response to threats he has received as a state official, and who once made headlines by bringing a target from range practice to the state capitol and proudly displaying that 148 out of 150 shots were clustered in the "kill zone" - has, more than anyone else, come to be identified with Utah's famously generous concealed-weapon law.

Under the Utah Concealed Weapon Act, anyone over the age of 21 who hasn't been convicted of a felony or other specifically named crimes is eligible for a concealed-weapon permit. To obtain it, he need only receive about six hours of firearm training and submit two letters vouching for his good character.

The law raised little notice until recently, when it sparked a controversy at the University of Utah. The university's internal rules prohibit students, faculty, and staff - including holders of concealed-weapon permits - from possessing firearms on campus. Such regulation is like that of other major universities.

Unfortunately, it is also "clearly in violation of state law," according to Shurtleff.

The attorney general made his position known last November, when he issued a legal opinion about a state agency that prohibited employees from carrying guns to work. His opinion noted that, according to Utah's constitution, only the legislature has authority to regulate firearms. Moreover, concealed-weapon permits are "valid throughout the state without restriction" unless otherwise specified by statute. As no exceptions to the law have been made for state agencies, and the legislature had never granted the agency in question authority to regulate guns, Shurtleff concluded that the agency's policy was illegal.

After he presented his opinion to Utah governor Michael O. Leavitt, the agency rescinded its ban. In a footnote to the same opinion, however, Shurtleff argued that the University of Utah's gun policy was also illegal, and for the same reasons. According to state law, the University of Utah is a "political subdivision" of the state. As with the state agency, the university had never been authorized to regulate firearms, nor had it been named an exception to the scope of the Concealed Weapon Act.

University administrators proved less amenable to Shurtleff's finding than their counterparts in the state bureaucracy. The university announced its intention to challenge Shurtleff's opinion in court, and in response the legislature - which each year reauthorizes the internal rules of state entities, and had not previously challenged the university's firearms policy - refused to reauthorize the school's gun ban. The lawmakers' message was clear: You are disobeying the law, and we don't like it.

The university sued the state, and the ensuing debate reached almost melodramatic heights. One law professor announced his intention to resign if the university lost the suit, and another professor said that her colleague from New York was literally afraid to come to Utah to deliver a talk. (Does her colleague expect a John Wayne-style gunfight with his audience?)

University administrators and lawyers put the case more subtly, making two basic arguments. First, they claim that Shurtleff has misinterpreted state law. The University of Utah's motion for declaratory judgment notes that, according to state code, the university's president has the authority to issue policies "governing the well being of persons and the security of property" at the university. That grant of authority, the university's lawyers argue, empowers the school's president to regulate firearms on campus.

But this argument was anticipated and refuted as early as 1998, when Utah's Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel issued its own opinion finding the University of Utah's policy illegal. (At the time, Shurtleff had not yet been elected attorney general, and he says that nothing came of the 1998 opinion because his predecessor "looked the other way.") The opinion notes that "under rules of statutory construction, a specific statute will govern over a general statute." Because the rule-making authority of the university's president is "general in nature" and "contains no specific grant of authority to regulate weapons on campus," the firearms ban is overridden not only by the fact that the legislature has specifically reserved to itself the power to regulate firearms, but also by the fact that the legislature has exempted holders of concealed-weapon permits from a law prohibiting guns on school campuses.

In addition, while the legislature has granted school administrators at elementary and secondary institutions the authority to approve (though not to prohibit) the possession of firearms, it has not given that authority to college administrators. This fact alone suggests that the legislature never intended for gun regulation to fall within a university president's rule-making powers.

As though realizing the dearth of support from state law for its position, the university has also pursued a second line of argument by discovering within the U.S. Constitution a novel right for universities to ban guns. In its motion for declaratory judgment, the university says that the Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment - that ever-bounteous source of protections and penumbras - to embody "a right to academic freedom enforceable by universities." It then argues that this right protects the university's "institutional autonomy especially as it relates to the creation and maintenance of an environment in which ideas may be freely exchanged without threat of violence, disruption, or coercion from public or private quarters" - and that a gun ban is necessary to such an environment.

This reasoning is the product of impressive lawyerly creativity. Not one of the Supreme Court decisions cited in the university's motion refers to firearms regulations. The best university lawyers can do is produce Court opinions that affirm a university administration's right to exercise "broad policy making power to assure the traditional academic atmosphere is safeguarded" (Healy v. James) and to "impose reasonable regulations compatible with [its] mission upon the use of its campus and facilities" (Widmar v. Vincent).

Yet even if these statements are interpreted to include the possibility of banning guns, the question of whether the presence of concealed weapons on campus actually interferes with the academic environment remains to be proven. University administrators assure the public that it does. "The free flow of ideas is chilled by the presence of pistols in the classroom," university vice president Fred Esplin says. This statement echoes the university's phalanx of lawyers. But such language fails to move beyond mere assertion; and while, prima facie, Esplin's claim doesn't seem entirely implausible, a higher standard of proof should surely be required to invalidate state laws.

There is indeed a whiff of lawlessness in the University of Utah's position. "Whatever decision is handed down, we will, of course, abide by," Esplin says. But the university continues to enforce its gun ban in spite of the legislature's refusal to reauthorize it, as though free to disregard whatever laws it finds disagreeable.

In fact, that message was made explicit in a second gun controversy, this time involving a group expected to hold the law in high regard: Utah's state judges.

Certain locations in the state are "secure areas" in which even holders of concealed-weapon permits may not carry firearms. They include airports and jails - and, until recently, state courts.

In its most recent session, Utah's legislature passed a law requiring that courthouses with "secure area" status provide on-facility lockers in which gun owners can store their firearms while at court. Ninety percent of the legislature supported the bill. Yet it so galled judges in Utah's Sixth Judicial District that, led by the district's presiding judge, they signed a 26-page order refusing to implement the new law. They argued that the law violated the separation of powers since judges possess authority to make rules for their courtrooms, and that the law would "result in greater security problems." Shortly thereafter, the remainder of Utah's 70 district-court judges endorsed the order and said that they too would fight the law.

The judges had neither lobbied the governor to veto the bill nor challenged it in court once it became law, but chose instead to simply ignore it. Shurtleff was baffled by their defiance. "I have a problem with them saying, 'We're not going to obey it,'" he says.

After a flurry of criticism, Utah's judicial council - the body that makes rules for the judiciary and has authority to declare courthouses secure areas - voted to suspend for 90 days the secure status of Utah's courts. Since the law requires lockers only on the condition that courts are designated secure areas, this maneuver meant that the courts were technically not in violation of state law.

But the solution is only temporary, and, ironically, it has actually decreased the penalty for packing heat in court. Judges continue to ban guns in their courtrooms under the rule-making authority they possess. But violators face nothing more than a contempt-of-court charge - a mere misdemeanor. By contrast, carrying a gun into a designated secure area is a felony.

The greater irony, though, is that state judges, whose very raison d'?tre is to interpret and uphold state law, have shown that they are perfectly willing to disregard a law when it suits them.

There may well be good reasons that courthouses shouldn't contain weapon lockers and universities should be free of concealed firearms. But Utah's laws on these topics are abundantly clear, and are not changed by the fact that some people dislike them. If these laws are bad policy, they should be challenged in the legislature - and until then, enforced.

Shurtleff puts the fundamental issue this way: "I keep getting bagged as pro-gun, but I didn't make these laws. I'm just trying to enforce them. Regardless of whether it's a judge or a governor or a university president or some guy on the street, you have to obey the law."

It seems the governor and the guys on the street are all right. As for the judges and the university president, we'll have to wait and see. http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment072902.asp


"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Iconoclast

Just goes to show - yet again - that the liberal elitists believe they are above the law because they know what's best for us and need to protect us from our ignorance.