imported post
Doug Huffman wrote:
lockman wrote:
Does a comma used as a separator or pause also remove any conditions attatched to the first item in the list?
Rule 12d(1), Harbrace College Handbook page 134. "Nonrestrictive clauses or phrases and nonrestrictive appositives are set off by commas. Restrictive elements are not set off."
Doesn't help, unfortunately, since this is a comma-separated list rather than a clause or an appositive.
Unfortunately, I think that the court would assume that "concealed" applies only to the first element of the list, not all of them. For two reasons.
First, 76-10-501 explicitly defines "concealed dangerous weapon", so it's reasonable for the court to assume that 76-10-1507(2)(a) is referring back to this definition, and aggregating it with a list of other items.
Second, and more important, if the court chose to presume that the "concealed" qualifier applied to each element of the list, then "firearms" is redundant, because per the definitions of section 501 a firearm is a dangerous weapon unless it is both unloaded and securely encased, so an OC'd firearm is a dangerous weapon even if unloaded. If, on the other hand, the court assumed that the "concealed" modifier applied only to "dangerous weapons", then the inclusion of "firearms" in the list is not redundant, since even though concealed firearms are contained in "concealed dangerous weapons", unconcealed firearms are not.
I'm not a lawyer, but I've read some opinions that turned on choosing the interpretation of the law that assumed lawmakers know what they're doing and don't write redundancies in the law. I don't know how valid that assumption is, but it gives courts a useful guideline to disambiguate statutes like 1507(2)(a).
Hmm. A counterargument just occurred to me. Interpreting "concealed" as not applying to "firearms" would also imply that even unloaded, securely-encased firearms are banned on buses, which would make it impossible to, for example, take a bus to the range for target practice. Courts also don't like to construe the law too broadly, and saying that there is absolutely no legal way to transport a firearm on a bus is pretty broad.
Bottom line to me: I don't think it's clear whether or not you can OC on a bus without a CFP, and I wouldn't want to be the test case for a third degree felony which can be argued either way. I'd be interested in Mitch Vilos' opinion.
