I got this blurb from Pravda West(aka L.A. Times-Pravda is the old mouth piece of the communist party in the old collapsed USSR), this is going to be an interesting fight between the gunners and the antis. The people is proposing a law to half the salaries of Utah employess who don't folllow the law. Cool!
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Los Angeles Times: Utah Gun Packers Don't Leave Home Without It

[url]http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-oly-021002guns.story?coll=la%2Dhome%2Dtodays%2Dtimes[/url]

Utah Gun Packers Don't Leave Home Without It
By KIM MURPHY
Times Staff Writer

February 10 2002

SALT LAKE CITY -- When Vice President Dick Cheney came to town last summer, a
lot of people didn't see any reason to leave their guns at home. If something
happened, wouldn't the vice president be better off with a roomful of
law-abiding armed Utahans there to help?

The Secret Service had another view--no guns, no exceptions--and state Atty.
Gen. Mark Shurtleff ended the argument by putting locked storage boxes outside
the convention hall where Cheney was speaking. That way, holders of
concealed-gun permits could leave the room when Cheney arrived, stow their guns
and fetch them when the vice president departed.

Now, with the Olympics here, many gun owners tried to argue that similar "safe
storage" facilities should be provided at the venues. In a state where permit
holders can legally take their guns into state offices, bars, elementary
schools, day-care centers, the state Capitol and churches, many see no reason
not to provide gun owners with a place to stow their weapons while attending
Olympic events.

State gun organizations lost that fight too, but are moving toward a showdown at
the University of Utah, where President J. Bernard Machen has defied a recent
state attorney general opinion that would allow teachers and students to carry
guns on campus for the first time in 20 years.

Last week, the Utah Senate's state and local affairs committee held hearings on
a bill that would allow the Legislature to withhold half the salaries of
officials who violate state laws--a pointed, if indirect, reference to Machen
and other college administrators believed to be defying the Legislature's will
on gun control.

"Classrooms, libraries, dormitories and cafeterias are no place for lethal
weapons," Machen told a legislative committee in January. "Their very presence
would interfere with the essential functions of a university."

-- continued --

Most of the other state colleges, along with Brigham Young University, run by
the Mormon church, also prohibit guns on campus, but Machen has gone out front
in the debate, declaring he's willing to go to court to keep guns out of the
university. The university's gun ban applies to students and teachers, but not
to visitors.

"I hold out some hope that we could be found to be not in defiance of the law,"
Machen said in an interview at his office near the Olympic Village, where
thousands of athletes and coaches are residing during the Games. "But our view
is that having guns around would challenge the very nature of dialogue on
campus, where the passionate defense of ideas is sort of the hallmark of what
we're all about."

Those arguing in favor of upholding the law, which lets holders of
concealed-weapon permits carry guns nearly anywhere, say university leaders miss
the point when they frame the issue around free academic debate.

What they should be considering is the safety of teachers and students who often
walk to their cars late at night, who feel safer with a gun to defend
themselves, said Janalee Tobias, president of Women Against Gun Control.

"Right now, with the Olympics, there's chain-link fences up everywhere and
helicopters hovering overhead and soldiers running around with guns. I think
you're pretty safe right now," Tobias said. "But what about later? They actually
think they can wave this magic wand and crime will just magically disappear. I
have a question for Bernie Machen: Why are there so many emergency phone booths
up there if the University of Utah is such a safe place?"

Utah ranks 12th lowest in the nation in violent crime.

Matt Boyden, a third-year law student who helped organize the College of Law Gun
Rights Advocates, said students long felt the university's ban on guns was
illegal under Utah law.

"It's a two-edged sword. From his [the university president] perspective, he
thinks if professors or students knew there were students who were concealing
firearms, they might not be at liberty to speak freely. But the Catch-22 is,
those students who carry may feel like they can't speak freely if you take away
the power to defend themselves," Boyden said.

Until the mid-1990s, Utah had fewer than 1,000 citizens with concealed-weapon
permits. Then, like many other states, Utah changed its laws in 1995 to qualify
most law-abiding citizens for a permit. Now, about 42,000 state residents, or 3%
of the adult population, are licensed to carry concealed firearms. They cannot
carry guns in secured areas such as airports, courthouses and jails.

They are subject to background checks, fingerprinting, training requirements and
regular law enforcement checks. Permits are declined for those who have been
convicted of drunken driving, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, felonies or violent
misdemeanors, as well as those who have been judged mentally incompetent.


-- continued --

With all those protections, gun advocates say, it's up to the state to come up
with a reason why citizens with permits should not be allowed to carry their
guns, whether it be on a university campus or to an Olympic skiing event.

The state Legislature passed a law in 1999 specifically declaring all Olympic
venues off limits for guns and mandating metal detectors to enforce the ban.
Many gun rights advocates said they could live with a ban that was enforced on
everyone--criminals and law-abiding citizens as well. But they pushed
strongly--and ultimately unsuccessfully--to store weapons in lockboxes at
venues. They rejected Olympic officials' suggestion that they leave their guns
at home or in their cars.

"Leaving your weapon at home makes you defenseless during the many hours that
you will spend traveling to and from each Olympic event. Leaving it in your
parked car is impractical, potentially unsafe and possibly illegal," the Gun
Owners of Utah argued in a position paper.

"The people responsible for this decision don't seem to understand that legally
armed American citizens are an asset to public safety, not a liability."

Those who have advocated limits on guns questioned the need for lockboxes. "I
can say, as someone who lives in downtown Salt Lake City, that the concept that
I would have to leave my home carrying a gun and [lock it up when I] go into a
secured area and immediately need my gun to go home again is silly," said Maura
Carabello, director of Utah's Gun Violence Prevention Center, which is
attempting to qualify an initiative for the November ballot to keep guns out of
schools and churches.

Winston Clark Aposhian, legislative liaison for Gun Owners of Utah, had secured
funding for Olympic lockboxes through the National Rifle Assn. But he said he
broke ranks with some of his colleagues and decided not to press the issue when
federal security officials appeared adamant.

"The Secret Service said, flat out, no," Aposhian said. "If I wanted to get on
the Secret Service bad list, I'd push it. But frankly, I don't."

No one, however, is backing down on the guns-on-campus fight.

Aposhian, who carries a .40-caliber "Baby" Glock stuffed into the back of his
waistband whenever he leaves the house, says many teachers and principals have
taken his concealed-weapon training courses.

Dining at a Salt Lake City restaurant one recent evening with the Glock wedged
between him and the back of the chair, Aposhian said he has rarely had to pull
his gun from the holster. But that doesn't make it any less useful, he said.

"If someone comes in here with a gun and tries to hold the place up, one of the
things he has to consider is, this is Utah. There may be return fire. That's one
of the fringe benefits of this law."


-- continued --

For years, many state agencies, along with the university, have prohibited
workers from carrying guns to work. But most of those regulations were turned on
their head last fall when the attorney general looked at an ordinance passed a
little over a year ago in the southern Utah town of Virgin. There, city leaders
had taken an affirmative stand on the 2nd Amendment by requiring all heads of
households to own a gun. (Most of the town's 394 residents already did.)

Shurtleff believed Virgin was possibly in violation of a state law, which placed
gun policy solely within the purview of the Legislature. Then again, he
concluded in a November opinion, so were state regulations that attempted to
prohibit state employees from carrying firearms in state facilities, in state
cars or on state business in places outside designated secure areas.

In hearings in late December before the state personnel board, some state
workers said they felt safer carrying a gun to work. "The concealed-weapon
permit holders I know are responsible people who are not trying to save the
world, they're trying to protect us," state employee Rodney Smith testified.
"They're going to be pointing guns the other way. Not at us."

But Lorna Brown, a mother of young children, said allowing guns in state
buildings would make it twice as hard to protect her children. If someone goes
on a shooting spree and the employees are unarmed, she said, "The only thing I
have to worry about is shots coming from one direction, not two."

Backers of the Safe to Learn, Safe to Worship initiative--ranging from the PTA
to the Utah Education Assn. and the Utah Medical Assn.--say schools and churches
are regarded as gun-free zones in most states and ought to be in Utah as well.

In January, when the Capitol Preservation Board met to consider gun regulations
inside the state Capitol, Atty. Gen. Shurtleff brought a silhouette target of a
human being from a recent trip he made to the shooting range, proudly displaying
148 out of 150 possible shots clustered in the so-called kill zone--to the
delight of most of the crowd.

Shurtleff still hopes to negotiate a resolution to the university issue, his
spokesman Paul Murphy said. "We are hoping we can get together, reason with each
other and that it can be settled without going to court."

Leaders in Virgin were happy to compromise. Last fall, they amended the law that
said households had to have a gun and required citizens instead to have "arms."

"We are not allowed to say 'firearms,' " Mayor Jay Lee said then. "We changed it
to say arms, which can mean anything from a pitchfork to a banana."

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at
latimes.com/archives. For information about reprinting this article, go to
www.lats.com/rights.

I forgot to post the following quote from the same piece:
 
"If someone comes in here with a gun and tries to hold the place up, one of the things he has to consider is, this is Utah. There may be return fire. That's one of the fringe benefits of this law."
--Winston Clark Aposhian, legislative liaison for Gun Owners of Utah

warlord, you didn't forget to post the quote from Aposhian.  It is right there at the bottom of Post #3.

The LA Time is usually rabidly anti-gun, but I must say that this piece by Kim Murphy is surprisingly balanced.  I lived in Utah until last year, and she has actually gotten the law right, along with plenty of reasoned and rational quotes from pro-gun men and women.  I wrote to her and thanked her for her balance.  A little positive reinforcement doesn't hurt...

Great post!

Bearlaker, whereabouts do you live?  I used to live in West Jordan, south of Salt Lake City.  I miss the mountains... [:(]

I don't leave home without it!!!

G19 all the time!  (unless working then G22)

I have a problem this also, why would a CCW hold be shooting at her, unless of course this lady is an aggressor. But mostly the shot are not meant at her but for an attacker. If I recall the incident at Lubby's Cafe, if someone had a weapon, Suzanne Huppa's parents would be alive today. So Lorna Brown's comments are totally off-base, unless of course, you represent HCI.

The self proclaimed deities running the U of U have no legal basis for their "ban".  That really chaps their hides.  Tough.  They need to conform to Utah State law just like everyone else.  Watch-Six

Yep.  What p***es me off is that they demand that the U's students and teachers obey their rules, but then turn around and flagrantly flout the rules that the Legislature has set for [b]them[/b].

Do as I say, not as I do.... hypocrites!

The academic freedom argument is one of the lamest things that I have ever heard.  The guns are concealed, for heaven's sake!

I was reading in the Mar/Apr 2002 of Backwoods Home Magazine([url]www.backwoodshome.com[/url], and the editor Dave Duffy notices that post-Sept 11 WTC/Pentagon attacks, the anti-gun  news media has cut back on the unrelenting attack on 2nd Amend rights.

He notices Boston Globe actually reported a self-defense act involving a man thewarting a robbery attemtp with a handgun, but alas, the Globe did put editorial comment by quoting an anti-gunner say "I'm glad that it worked out in this particular case. But in the future we may be looking at a tragedy."

Compare that to the L.A. Times editorial comment, "But Lorna Brown, a mother of young children, said allowing guns in state buildings would make it twice as hard to protect her children. If someone goes on a shooting spree and the employees are unarmed, she said, "The only thing I have to worry about is shots coming from one direction, not two."

He goes on to say that a lot of reporters since has gone out and bought guns for themselves.