SB 229 passed the conference committee, the Senate 38-10, and the House 75-24, and now goes to the Governor. This was the last day the legislation could be passed, so it was down to the wire.
The substance of the bill is fairly straightforward and consists of three reforms. The first two reforms remove traps in existing law for legal gun owners. Currently, part of the law created "roaming gun free school zones" whenever school children went for an official function. Where the children went, there went the "gun free" zone. A legal gun carrier could be sitting on a bench in a zoo, minding her own business, and have children from a school field trip approach her. She then would be committing a felony, because she would possess a firearm in a "gun free" zone. The law fixes that error.
Second, people who legally have guns with them in their vehicle may legally have them when they pick up children at a school. They are not allowed to take their defensive firearms with them into the school. If they leave them in the car, even locked up, to go into the school for some reason, they have committed a felony. The law fixes that by defining "schools" as the school buildings and not the parking lots.
The last reform is about gun turn in programs, commonly called "buy backs" even though the people buying the guns never owned them in the first place. The law says that public money is not to be used for the "buy backs" and if the firearms come into the custody of a public entity, the entity must sell the guns or parts, not destroy them and waste valuable assets. This reform has been vigorously opposed in the old media.
I have not found where Governor Mike Pence has spoken about this bill.
©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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