U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “A bill that would prohibit people from openly carrying a gun within 500 feet of any K-12 school in Utah was defeated in committee Wednesday after complaints from gun lobbyists and Republican lawmakers,” The Salt Lake Tribune reports. “HB217 was rejected with a vote that fell along party lines. Six GOP members of the House Law Enforcement Committee opposed it while two Democrats supported it.”
The implication is clear: Democrats want “common sense gun safety” and Republicans are unreasonable, no doubt in the thrall of the NRA.
But is such a prohibition reasonable? Is maintaining a “gun-free” open carry perimeter “common sense”?
“Currently, Utah law blocks the open carry — but not concealed carry — of a gun inside any elementary, middle or high school. But outside, it’s allowed,” we’re told. “The state Legislature passed a measure in 2011 that removed the 1,000-foot gun-free zone around schools for people to carry a firearm openly.”
So what the demonstrable need for changing things? And would doing so likely change feared outcomes, or actually make them more likely since anyone intent on shooting up a school will hardly be deterred by such a “law”? All it would do is eliminate one deterrent capability from the “law-abiding.”
Bill sponsor Rep. Joel Briscoe, D-Salt Lake City, calls the ban a “compromise,” and says it is “reasonable.” The reason he feels (not thinks) this way is because he claims it “would make schools ‘psychologically more secure.’”
For the cud-chewers, no doubt. For those who have made note of the disastrous consequences when the right to keep and bear arms is infringed, the concern would be more than “psychological,” it would be corroborated by real-world experience.
One of the ideas promoted by the anti-gunners is that “we have a right to feel safe.” Since how we feel is subjective, and since two people can have different reactions to the same situation, there is no universal consensus. Hoplophobes have no right to impose their neuroses on the rest of us any more than narcissists have a right to expect us to agree with their self-assessment of wonderfulness.
Besides, no one who’s watching thinks this is all Briscoe and fellow House Democrat Caucus gun-grabbers want. Aside from taking full advantage of a media megaphone to repeat the intentional (Violence Policy-originated) deception about “an automatic rifle,” he and they will step over every incremental ceded to them and then press on for:
- Ending private sales.
- A “bump stock” ban.
- “Safe disposal of firearms.”
- Using tax money for anti-gun “research.”
- Lock up your safety mandates.
It’s all part of what national Democrats have characterized as “baby steps,” which ultimately end up at the bottom of Nancy Pelosi’s “slippery slope.”
Who thinks, if surrounded by circling jackals, it would be a good idea to throw them a scrap of flesh in the hopes that they’d then be satisfied and go away? Voracious predators that want it all know weakness when they see it. You don’t give the collectivist pack an inch.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
Federal law already prohibits open carry on school property – as well as concealed carry (except where the carrier has been vetted in writing by local law enforcement or governing body) under 18 USC § 922 (q)(2)(ii)– Concealed carry in schools
He used the wrong map – that map is a map of the 2016 election results showing all the counties that Hillary won!!!
Democrats trying to out God God have really screwed this country up, haven’t they.
According to this map there was a mass shooting in my town. Funny I never heard about it…
I doubt the validity of the map with respect to REAL mass shooting incidents versus those “classified as” such. I would be willing to reduce the number of “incidents” by 60% and deem it “fairly accurate”. Criminals, by definition (lawbreakers) don’t care about laws. The left however has some notion that everyone will follow a law if it’s passed. No so. All *gun free zone* laws do is create a safe playing/killing field for would be shooters with evil intentions. So if guns are the problem then tell me again the statistics on mass shootings at gun shows and ranges?… Read more »
“Gun violence” doesn’t exist. Nor does criminal use of a motor vehicle constitute “car violence”. Just as beating your wife in a drunken frenzy does not deserve to be recognized as “whiskey violence”. However, using London, England as an example the moslem mayor has declared there is a “knife violence epidemic”. He sounds like a student of Nancy Pelosi’s Ten Tenets of Communism. Just as the Left has changed the language from identifying homosexuals as such. They have manipulated the language over the last 40 years, to make “gay” the acceptable social justice term rather than the harsh homosexual identifier.… Read more »
“ANIMAL FARM”
Great post Dan III.
It has been my contention, and personal crusade to inform ANYONE that will listen; that school shootings, and mass shootings in general can be eliminated TOMORROW, with zero additional cost to any budget at any level. Ready for it…ELIMINATE ALL LAWS THAT CREATE THE GUN FREE DEATH ZONE! Once that would happen, there would be nowhere in the country a mass shooter would ever feel fully safe to unleash death and mayhem unimpeded. Imagine, being able to carry a firearm anywhere, making criminals feel 100% safe nowhere!
“All it would do is eliminate one deterrent capability from the “law-abiding.”” And all the chorus shouted AMEN! All those “gun free zone” laws do is invite the shooters of ‘ducks on a pond,’ and keeps folk like this out:
If God’s “Thou Shalt Not Kill” doesn’t prevent “gun violence”, why does a politician think yet another of man’s laws (there are over 20,000 anti-gun laws on the books already) will be the solution? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome. Creating prey for the predator does not stop the predation. “Killing is a matter of will, not weapons. You cannot control the act itself by passing laws about the means employed.” The late Col Jeff Cooper, 1958 Handgun expert and founder of Gunsite Academy “If a violent crime is to be curbed, it… Read more »
Hay Ammoland, My comments DON’T make it thru your FRONT door AND NO, i haven’t said this before.
Ammoland’s comment posting simply sucks. Give it a couple days and you will see it.
Passing through Salinas, Kansas last June on the way home from Applied Ballistics Seminar in St. Lake City, I attended a KASM (Kansa Active Shooter Mitigation) Program presented by Trooper Ben Gardner. He presented data logging all the “mass shootings” since the Texas College Tower shooting in 1966. There has not been any increased in the frequency….only in the exponential increase in media reporting coverage and focus by politicians for political traction.
That map… purpotring to show all the “mass shootings” since Scammy Crooks……. I don’t buy it. I think I’ve seen some report of nearly all of the “mass shootings” before and since that. That map seems to show way too many incidents…… anyone know the real data behind that map? I’ve seen lists of “school shootings” where a gun was found in a car parked at night on a school property, and included…. and a shooting at a neigbouring house that could have been next the Safeway instead of the school, and they both count toward “school shootings”.. ANYTHING to… Read more »
I agree. I looked at that and wondered whether it might not instead be a map of McDonald’s restaurant locations. Either that, or a “mass shooting” is any time a mugger takes someone’s wallet. So phony, but as usual, what Democrats present as “truth”.
Well, the felon punk that shot up the school inParkland Florida walked right onto the campus (committing a crime right there because he’d been given the boot and told he may NOT enter those school grounds, prohibited to be there for any reason) with his trust Modern Sporting Rifle (which he SHOULD not have been able to buy legally, another matter) in a case, and was SEEN by at least one of the school “safety officers” responsible for school “security”. The fraudulent “security” guy watched him enter the property, walk across part of it, and enter the building in which… Read more »
The lawless left thinks all criminals and evil doers will follow the law. They think they know common sense, and yet what they know are neither common nor sensible, they actually have no clue. How misguided are they?
Why does Ammoland not link directly to external websites? All their links reference only back to other Ammoland posts. It can be difficult to track back to the original sites they reference, to add commentary or use as primary sources.
that law would have criminalized every home owner that lived by a school!
Democrats only wanted an excuse to go door to door and violate the 4th and 14th amendments!
BET ON IT!
I think the simplest and most “common sense” solution would be to make it illegal to shoot and or kill someone. That would cover all the bases. They also might consider writing a law that criminals, gang members and hit men take all their guns down to their local Sheriff’s Office.
Problem solved.
Nobody has the right to feel anything, let alone safe. Safety is only an illusion, individuals have been taken out in a heartbeat since the beginning of time. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a moron or ignorant.
Bring it. When the smoke clears the democrats will all be dead.
Republican’s had two full years to nail down federal legislation to prevent ‘gun control’ and
did absolutely nothing to protect our 2A.
Anytime I hear the looney left say “common sense” I think BOHICA!
The Socialist Offensive is in full attack mode.
Concealed has always, and continues to this day, meant concealed.
Almost all shooter events occurred in “gun free zones” because the shooters know they will have no resistance, and now those idiots want to create a larger “safety zone” for the criminals and put us all in greater danger.
The left’s idea of reasonable gun control, ban everything more powerful than a pea shooter.
The pea shooters will be next.
Limited to paper straws only.
Straws are illegal in California.
@ Tom then I guess the Dems will make you a felon just so the can physcologically feel better.
What about folks who live by a school…..like right across the street?
It’s time for a total “We Will Not Comply” mindset. Rosa Parks didn’t upgrade her seat on the bus because she followed the rules.
@ Ansel H.
That is a good analogy of the situation. It is about time we Constitutionalist Americans start to resist and buck the system. The system is rigged against us but we are the primary tax payers that keep the muzzies and democrats afloat. Rosa Parks and many others did that and won, why can’t we.
They don’t care about your safety, only their own feelings.
They Have Feelings? How can they when they have trashed their souls?
Stop using common sense, it just confuses the idiots that want to ban guns.
.. I see what you mean lol
.. but we also know, that if we continue to use common sense, it might, just might? ..create an itch in their brains, that will cause them to get brave enough to scratch and claw their way to the truth again!
Let us hope!
It’s your life. You choose to waste as much of it as you want with that logic… We will find a cure for the common cold before you find any way possible to fix STUPID.