imported post
Jamfish wrote:
seattleric007 wrote:
Dosen't the gun have to be on your person in WA state, if loaded and in a car?
You are correct, as far as I know...
RCW 9.41.050
(2)(a) A person shall not carry or place a loaded pistol in any vehicle unless the person has a license to carry a concealed pistol and:
(i) The pistol is on the licensee's person,
(ii) the licensee is within the vehicle at all times that the pistol is there, or
(iii) the licensee is away from the vehicle and the pistol is locked within the vehicle and concealed from view from outside the vehicle.
I've assumed that (i) & (ii) go together.
But does the closing 'or' construe that (i) & (ii) are mutually exclusive? Meaning, as long as you have your CPL on you and you're in the vehicle, you can slip your pistol into a rig like simmonsjoe's (pictured above)?
Not mutually exclusive, but equally optional.
I am not a lawyer and I am not a resident of the state in question, but as a lifelong native English speaker who studies various sorts of requirements for a living, it is plainly obvious to me that no mater what the intent of the Washington State legislature might have been, this small portion of the law actually says that you may have a gun in a car, but it is not
required to be on your person.
Although I can understand how someone could mis-interpret it, it just simply does not say that you must always have the gun on your person.
This portion of the law in very reduced complexity says:
You may not have a gun in a car unless you have a concealed permit,
and: A, B,
or C.
Where A is that it must be on your person.
B is that you must be in the vehicle if the gun is in the vehicle.
C is that if you are not in the vehicle, the gun must be secured.
The English says it perfectly, and in my opinion option C reinforces the idea that the intent of the law is simply to ensure that there will not be a gun left unattended and unsecured in a car.
In order to interpret that you must have the gun on your person at all times, option B becomes nonsensical, because there would be no way for you to not be in the vehicle if the gun was in the vehicle.
Finally, the list is structured A, B, or C. If the intent was for A to always be true, then not only is B nonsensical, the words leading up to the list would have to be changed to say:
You may not have a gun in a car unless you have a CHP,
and A.
At that point, options B and C are orphaned from any coherent thought and are undefined.
When a list is given, and a logical operator is provided at the end like it is here, it is assumed that the same operator applies to all the members of the list. If you say A, B or C, you cannot infer A and B or C. If you think this is incorrect, go to a restaurant where the menu says your dinner comes with a salad, a side dish, or a dessert, and see what happens when you demand 2 or 3 of the three options to be included with your original dinner price!
Just my late night rambling thoughts.
TFred
ETA: P.S. it appears to me that option A is actually not needed and that the law would be virtually identical without it. However, I would suppose they included it, because that is how the vast majority of guns in vehicles actually happen, being on the person with the permit...