j2l3 wrote:
Sgt Eagle is an upfront and solid guy. Fully supoprting our rights. He is correct about the lease thing. It is supported in court decisions involving the city of Sequim.
Someone help me with the citation please.
Does that make it right? Not really. Does it make it legal? Yes.
From the bolded part, no it's not.
To quote PNSPA v. Sequim
It follows that if the
city had authority to regulate possession of firearms in its
convention center under RCW 9.41.300, it also had
authority to regulate sales of firearms under RCW
9.41.300. The authority to regulate sales of firearms
flowed from its authority to regulate possession of
firearms under RCW 9.41.300.(fn4)
Note that the cited text does not apply to "(i) Any pistol in the possession of a person licensed under RCW
9.41.070 or exempt from the licensing requirement by RCW
9.41.060; or"... The important thing to this is that the first exemption is an individual exemption, meaning the city cannot act in a manner that restricts possession by an individual licensed under 9.41.070. Even in the oft-quoted "acting in a private capacity" section, the sequim decision states:
The preemption clause does not prohibit a
private property owner from imposing conditions on the
sale of firearms on his or her property. RCW 9.41.290.
Applying our reasoning in Cherry, it follows that a
municipal property owner like a private property owner
may impose conditions related to firearms for the use of
its property in order to protect its property interests. For
the same reason that a municipal employer may enact
policies regarding possession of firearms in the
workplace because a private employer may do so, a
municipal property owner should be allowed to impose
conditions related to sales of firearms on its property if a
private property owner may impose them. The critical
point is that the conditions the city imposed related to a
permit for private use of its property. They were not laws
or regulations of application to the general public.
Basically, the city cannot make it a part of the contract to prevent the general public from exercising their right to keep and bear arms. I think that it also means they cannot make a term of the condition a restriction upon the general public, simply upon those leasing the property. Those restrictions upon the lease cannot apply to showings, demonstrations, or lectures; this did not apply in the Sequim case, as the issue at stake was the sale of firearms.