Utah Lawmaker plans to repeal gun ban on buses and trains

Under current Utah "anti-hijacking" law it is a felony to take a concealed firearm or other concealed weapon onto a bus or train (including UTA buses and trains/lite-rail) unless you have a firearm carry permit.

Rep. Norman Thurston (Provo-Republican) is proposing to eliminate (or at least modify) this law to eliminate this penalty. The Deseret News recently carried an article with details.

The legislative website shows Rep. Thurston has a bill request for this topic. But it is not yet numbered and no text available to the public yet.

At first glance, this will likely be a bill well worth our support.

Charles

"If their weapon isn't secured safely," she said, "It's just one of those incidents where I think the risk of something going wrong or someone deliberately using it in a bad way is higher than any change of it preventing any sort of crime."

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Do these Chicken Littlettes actually read what they write and then compare that to existing law before they post their objection? (76-10-523(1)(a), (b), (c), (d), and (e)

(4)(a) A person who boards a bus with a concealed dangerous weapon or firearm upon his person or effects is guilty of a [strike]third degree felony[/strike] being a low-down dirty rotten snake in the grass, that a CCer is and will be compelled, under penalty of law, to openly carry the dangerous weapon or firearm. The penalty for failure to OC is buying three boxes (minimum of 12 doughnuts) of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and delivering them to the nearest LEA facility. The guilty will be provided a reasonable amount of time to acquire and deliver the doughnuts, under police escort.
(4)(b) The prohibition of Subsection (4)(a) does not apply to:
(i) individuals listed in Subsections 76-10-523(1)(a), (b), (c), (d), and (e);
(ii) a person licensed to carry a concealed weapon; or
(iii) persons in possession of weapons or firearms with the consent of the owner of the bus or the owner's agent, or the lessee or bailee of the bus.
(iV) folks who are OCing.

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Do ya think semantics would, as the law is currently written, keep a OCer out of the slammer? It does specifically state that concealing a gat is bad.

OC for ME said:

Do these Chicken Littlettes actually read what they write and then compare that to existing law before they post their objection? (76-10-523(1)(a), (b), (c), (d), and (e)

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Rarely. But I will say that we have had great success the last 10 years or so with a couple of our permit instructors providing free classes to new legislators each session. I doubt they've converted any antis, but most folks are honest enough that once they know the law it gets to be much more difficult to offer up really asinine objections.

It was great as we successfully advocated for permit-free car carry a few years back (and not quite as successfully yet for constitutional permit free carry) to hear the antis have no real choice but to extol the virtues of the very shall-issue, reasonable-to-obtain carry permit that they generally like to attack.

OC for ME said:

Do ya think semantics would, as the law is currently written, keep a OCer out of the slammer? It does specifically state that concealing a gat is bad.

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I'm not a lawyer, I don't go to jail if someone else screws up, etc, etc.

But as I read the law, there is some ambiguity. Note the wording carefully:

"A person who boards a bus with a concealed dangerous weapon or firearm upon his person or effects is guilty of a third degree felony."

The great question is whether the key phrase should be read as:

"concealed (dangerous weapon or firearm)"

or whether it should be read as:

"(concealed dangerous weapon) or firearm"

In the first case, only a concealed firearm is a violation. But in the second case, any firearm is a violation. I've heard reports from those who claim that our transit authority only believes it applies to concealed guns, OC is ok. But to be honest, I personally avoid mass transit like the plague and have a permit anyway (which exempts me from the ban no matter which way it is interpreted), so researching a definitive answer has been low on my priority list.

No one I know is going to risk a felony to be a test case to see which way it goes. So far better to simply remove the prohibition entirely as I hope the bill will do.

Charles

utbagpiper said:

...

The great question is whether the key phrase should be read as:

"concealed (dangerous weapon or firearm)"

or whether it should be read as:

"(concealed dangerous weapon) or firearm"

...

Charles

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It may just be me, but commas do make a difference. Is it a grammatical error? Or, is it what it is. It would be interesting to find if any defense was attempted in court by a citizen charged with this (OCing) and won based on the lack of a comma.

I am terrible at searching case law. I'm not legal savvy enough to know how to phrase a search term.

Nightmare said:

Commas are at the root of the contemporary controversy over the meaning of the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment was engrossed with different placement of commas than the original manuscript. Yes, they matter, and yes, formal grammar and spelling matters.

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I can't find a photo, but I love the T-shirt that reads:

Let's eat Grandma.
Let's eat, Grandma.
(Commas save lives.)

Charles

HB

H.B. 350 passed out of committee today. It also appears to have passed the 2nd reading in the House and is on the House 3rd reading Calendar.

It passed committee on an 8-2-1 vote:
Yeas - 8
Daw, B.
Eliason, S.
Ipson, D.
McIff, K.
Peterson, J.
Ray, P.
Redd, E.
Roberts, M.

Nays - 2
Hollins, S.
Romero, A.

Absent - 1
Tanner, E.

Charles