Weapons may be checked outside Olympic venues

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Weapons may be checked outside Olympic venues SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Gun-rights advocates who hold concealed weapons permits can set up their own gun storage lockers outside Olympic venues during the games - as long as they pay for it themselves and thread the city's bureaucratic permit maze."We don't see why we should have to pay for it, but yes, we would," gun-rights advocate Winton Clark Aposhian said Wednesday. "I'd love to do that, actually. We haven't been given the go-ahead. We've just been getting the brushoff."The idea, though, is fine with the Salt Lake Organizing Committee and the attorney general's office. Olympic organizers are standing by an earlier decision not to provide weapons storage lockers inside venues."If (gun storage) is outside the venue, we have no jurisdiction," SLOC spokeswoman Nancy Volmer said."If a private group wants to provide that service, and wants to do the legwork, there's no law that prevents them from doing it," added Rick Cantrell, spokesman for Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.Aposhian said this week he and others who wanted secure storage for their guns during the Olympics had given up expectations that games organizers would provide the service."They wouldn't even return my phone calls," he said.That might be because he was calling the wrong people.John Sittner, director of Olympic planning for Salt Lake City, said setting up gun-storage lockers outside the venues would require a city permit, obtained from the city's property management office.Sittner said the revokable permit would be like those issued to vending carts at a "negligible" cost."Unfortunately, the issue of storage for guns is not something that has come up before," Sittner said. Therefore, procedures are not in place.Should gun-rights advocates request a permit, the city attorney's office would review the request "and find out whether that is something we're allowed to do and how we can make that work," Sittner said.Weapons were outlawed from the 10 competition sites, nine blocks of downtown Salt Lake City in the secure Olympic Square area and at other Olympic sites as part of a 1999 deal between lawmakers and gun-rights groups.Utah has issued 41,800 concealed weapons permits; however, Aposhian said he probably would need no more than 30 lockers, which would cost $300 to rent, to accommodate permit holders attending the Olympics.But proximity is crucial. "There's a killing zone between where you store your weapon and the metal detectors," he said. "So if there were to be a terrorist attack against unarmed civilians, it would be in that area." http://www.amarillonet.com/stories/122701/spo_weapons.shtml