SB 115, the library gun free zones/open carry revenge bill
has died, along with SB387, the gun violence restraining order bill (gun
confiscations). Neither bill left the Assembly Judiciary Committee before their
deadlines. The legislative session ends officially June 6.
For those concerned with libraries respecting the law, the
lawsuit appeal is pending. The legislature has spoken (favorably, for us, after
a fashion) and the judiciary will as well. We need to be patient and let the
legal process finish itself out. Rome wasn’t built in a day. To those who feel “something”
needs to be done, your support in opposition of the bill sent the message that
Nevadan’s don’t want more gun free zones, especially with such an egregious
background as SB 115 had. No other actions are needed right now.
As for SB387, we will see it again in some form in the next
session in 2019 or on the ballot like with Question 1. Right now, we need to
spread the word that pre-crime confiscation of guns is not the way to go and it
will do nothing to disarm those who are a danger. Rather, it is empowering
people to defend themselves against attackers or help those who need mental
health treatment to get it. Taking due process away to “do something” to save
lives is anti-American and will not make anyone safer.
I want to thank everyone for their comments and opinions
submitted to the legislators. I also want to thank the senators and the assemblymen
and women who voted or otherwise opposed these bills, even across the aisle. Beyond
that, I invite those who hold opposing viewpoints to speak with us candidly and
see our point of view.
Remember, pro-gun candidates must take a majority in 2018 or Nevada will be lost. Let’s begin
turning our energy to selecting and helping to elect pro-rights candidates for
our state.
SB 115
would turn libraries into gun-free zones like schools, prohibiting guns even in
the parking lots. The bill was created to “trump” challenges mounted by pro-gun
activists against the Las Vegas Clark County Library District (LVCCLD), which
has illegally enforced a gun ban. This came to a head when a mother, legally
openly carrying her gun, was improperly arrested and filed a lawsuit based on
state law that prohibits local gun rules or regulations. Despite what local
media report and supporters claim, this bill exists because citizens stood up
for their rights. Now, unscrupulous officials, elected and unelected, want to
change the law because they don’t want to have to obey the law.
Letting SB 115 pass into
law would:
Create a chilling effect on civil rights by rewarding officials
who change a the law to avoid complying with it.
Show the state has little interest in enforcing state firearm
preemption laws.
Provide no safety benefit and put law-abiding Nevadan library
patrons at risk for violence.
Encourage the Democrat-led erosion of Nevada’s right to bear arms.
Allow the officials involved to escape responsibility for their
illegal actions.
Open carry in a library?
Yes, state lawbans licensed
concealed carry in public buildings (government buildings) where signs
or metal detectors are posted at each public entrance. Open carry is not
prohibited. If one wants to carry a firearm legally in a library, they must do
so openly. State legal experts agree. Until the 1990s, concealed carry was
generally demonized, whereas open carry was constitutionally protected.
Where
this bill come from?
For nearly
a decade, LVCCLD has illegally prevented open carry in its libraries. Many
incidents have been recorded of legally armed citizens, minding their own
business, being kicked out. The library bureaucrats made their illegal policy
without a vote by the library trustees, thus breaking another law.
Citizens petitioned
the district and trustees to remove the illegal ban, but the district continued
to break the law. After enhanced state preemption of firearm laws was passed in
2015, allowing the option to sue for violations, LVCCLD was sued in 2016, but
the case was lost in the pre-trial phase. Most preemption suits nationwide are
won on appeal.
SB 115
would circumvent the preemption argument by prohibiting guns at libraries
totally, just like at schools. This way, no lawsuit under preemption would
work. LVCCLD officials are afraid that without SB 115, they will be sued again
and lose.
What do
the supporters claim is need for this bill?
Senator
Denis asserted that he feels earlier legislation mistakenly left libraries out
of the law. As the above context and quote (below) from the Assemblywoman show,
Denis’ explanation is an excuse and probably a lie.
If
Senator Denis meant the “no weapons in schools” law, libraries have never
been considered like schools and no discussion was had before now. If Senator Denis
meant that the state preemption law reform should have exempted libraries, why
didn’t he propose a bill to amend the respective preemption laws? Denis voted
“yes” on one version of the preemption laws, 2015’s SB 240, which did not
exempt libraries. If there was a mistake then, why didn’t he try to correct it
or vote against the bill?
There
wasn’t an “error” in preemption. LVCCLD doesn’t want preemption to apply to
them. Emily Dickinson wrote “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” and in this
sense, Denis lied via not telling the whole truth when he stated he felt
schools were “left out,” if indeed he felt that way.
The bill’s
co-sponsor and former LVCCLD trustee, Assemblywoman Shannon Bilbray-Axelrod,
admitted to local media that pursuing a legislative fix to the gun ban protest
problem would be a priority. So yes, by their own admission, SB 115 is directly
because of the open carry challenge.
“I
think it’s going to be something we’re going to have to take up in the
Legislature to make that distinction. I think it was a complete oversight.” (source)
What is
state preemption and how does it apply?
State
preemption of firearm laws prohibits any political or government entity other
than the legislature from making gun regulations, except for unsafe discharge.
The law specifically applies to cities, counties, and towns, but also gives onlythe legislature authority to make gun
regulations. This keeps all state laws uniform and avoids someone
unintentionally violating a rule when traveling outside the area they are
familiar with.
LVCCLD
claims that since library districts aren’t explicitly included that they can
make rules that prohibit guns. NRA lobbyist Dan Reed pointed out that if true,
a special “gun ban” district could be made and make all sorts of anti-gun laws
because the statute doesn’t specifically mention special districts like
libraries.
Statements
made by LVCCLD officials and the Senator himself indicate they are aware that
state preemption does apply to them and they are afraid of losing another
lawsuit. Their defense in court was that preemption does apply and got the
lawsuit dismissed, partially on those grounds. So if preemption doesn’t apply
to library districts, why the need for this bill?
Who needs
a gun in the library?
One could
ask this same question about a school with the response being a litany of
school shootings that may have been prevented by someone shooting back. In
fact, a few school shootings have been deterred or stopped by good guys with
guns. If guns aren’t needed at the library, then why does LVCCLD hire armed
security guards? Surely if citizens don’t need guns, security doesn’t either.
No one
knows when or where violence will strike. It could be a disgruntled employee, a
random attack, or ordinary criminal violence. It can also happen outside the
library. Many open carriers cannot afford the training and fees for a concealed
weapon permit, so they have no choice but to carry openly. Since they choose to
protect themselves in public, why should they be forced to decide between going
to the library unarmed or not going at all?
What
makes a library such a special place that guns should be forbidden there? If
mass shootings occur in churches and schools, there is nothing sacred or
special about a library. Legally armed citizens do not manipulate their
firearms in public or leave them in reach of children and neither has there
ever been an recorded act of violence by a legally armed Nevadan in a library
here.
Without
evidence of legally armed citizens causing a problem, why is a ban needed? And
with the context of all the illegal behavior of LVCCLD, should we really excuse
everything they’ve done wrong by passing this law?
What
about the parking lot exemptions?
The proposed parking lot exemption was proposed because
opponents of the bill pointed out that those dropping off books or otherwise
using library parking lots would be affected, as the law in question prohibits
firearms any part of the property.
This is a cop out, not a good thing.
The exemption is meant as a feel-good measure to overcome
objections without actually doing anything. Schools will not create a pro-gun
parking lot policy and one cannot trust libraries like LVCCLD to make fair
policy in favor of gun owners. On the other hand, should the exemption become
law, it would be a good start for parents and students to lobby for parking lot
firearm exemption policies on campus.
SB 115 cannot be
allowed to become law. A gun free zone is a killing zone and bureaucrats should
never be rewarded for breaking the law.
Remember SB
115, the library gun free zone/open carry revenge bill? Well, the Assembly
Judiciary Committee held its hearing on the bill Tuesday, May 10th. Guess what
came out of it? A Democrat who supports campus carry! Earlier, we predicted
this as a possible outcome.
Senator
Denis’ proposed
an amendment which amounts to campus carry lite. Under his amendment, it
would be legal at many schools, college/universities, libraries, etc. to openly
carry or carry concealed in the parking lot or have a gun in your car. That’s
right; Senator Denis approves of citizens having guns in plain sight on campus.
Basically, what his amendment does far surpasses SB
102-the dead parking lot exemption bill from Republican Senator Settlemyer
which only decriminalized guns in locked or occupied cars. Under Senator Denis'
amendment, schools, colleges/universities, and libraries would have a blank
check to be as pro-gun in the parking lots as they wanted.
One of the
major objections to SB 115 was regarding books drop-offs or taxi and rideshare
drivers inadvertently breaking the law by going into a library parking lot. The
caveat is that such a policy would be discretionaryand creates an illusion of a solution. Denis’ intended “checkmate”
to overcome these objections back into basically the same problem he faced
before. Libraries could easily ban such conduct if they wanted, and libraries
making up the rules as they go is the whole problem here.
The first
problem is that the policy to create the exemption is not mandatory, meaning that a library wouldn’t have to a parking
lot exemption at all. Even if they did, it could be as narrow or broad as they
liked. If libraries wouldn’t follow the law now, do you trust them to make an
exemption to protect you now?
This is a
cop-out from a mandatory parking lot exemption because Denis’ made a huge
mistake in tying libraries to schools. He can’t make a mandatory exemption to
library only parking lots because it would make him a hypocrite on his alleged
reasoning of the “need” for SB 115. If he applies it equally, as he is claiming
he is trying to do with his law, he creates de
facto campus carry. As this bill stands, many pro-gun and rural schools,
libraries, etc. could very easily make very liberal parking lot carry policies
allowing even open carry.
If this passes as-is,
it will lead to more and more schools and etc. adopting pro-gun policies,
slowly bringing down the wall of resistance to true campus carry. Does Senator Denis really want to be known as the guy who
got the campus carry ball rolling in Nevada? Even if he amends his amendment,
he falls into one of the traps
we’ve outlined before. It’s a no-win situation for Democrats.
Second,
this amendment goes against the whole idea of state preemption of firearm laws,
which has been in effect since the 1980s, that is a patchwork of policies are a
bad idea. Optional policies, the terms of which can be broad or narrow and set
individual, are a can of worms.
Without
extensive prior research, there would be no telling if it is legal to cross
that threshold from the street or not. These “policies” adopted could vary so
widely that any supposed “advantages” may be meaningless.
The amendment raised
questions as to how such a policy would be implemented. Will a library district exempt some branches and not others? Will
certain schools or school districts be okay with guns in the parking lot? What
if the Henderson libraries ban guns in parking lots, but LVCCLD does not? How
many citizens could accurately tell you what district a library belongs in? And
who will oversee the policies to see they are fairly implemented? The LVCCLD
board of trustees totally ignored its administrators flagrant violation of the
law.
If we
cannot trust LVCCLD to obey state law in the first place—to the extent they try
to re-write it altogether to justify their crimes—how can we trust them to
implement a fair policy? All they had to do was acknowledge the fact that open
carry is legal in a public building and leave it at that, but instead, at every
opportunity, they chose to do the wrong thing. With this kind of track record,
they have shown they are unworthy of discretion, not to mention there is no
legitimate need for this bill.
Once
again I remind the reader that SB 115 exists because citizens dared challenge
LVCCLD’s illegal ban on legally openly carried firearms. SB 115 would set a
horrible precedent that would encourage government officials to violate laws
they disagree with, then pass laws to condone their behavior once citizens
challenge the law. In a democratic and constitutional society, this amounts to
tyranny. Any statesman or jurist of repute cannot allow this behavior. Today,
it might be gun free zones in libraries. Tomorrow, it could be anything you can
imagine.
At the
very least, should the worst come to pass, those in rural counties or with
right-minded principals and trustees might have Senator Denis to thank for
campus carry lite.
The bill
is up for a work session next Tuesday, March 16. Learn
the history behind the SB 115 and the illegal activities of LVCCLD. You can
use the email links below to email members of the Assembly Judiciary Committee.
Let's take a look at the email document dump from the two largest library districts in the state, Las Vegas Clark County Library District (LVCCLD) and the Washoe County County Library System, obtained via an Open Records Act request.
Washoe County Libraries informed emailed its entire library leadership and management about SB 115. By informing the staff, it implies support. If they didn't want it, they wouldn't have emailed everyone.
The Las Vegas Clark County Library District (LVCCLD) sent its email to various interested parties, other library districts/board, and external mailing lists.
LVCCLD Chairman trustee Ronald Heezen wrote, "We would like to encourage them [friends, family, and colleagues] to SUPPORT SB115 which would prohibit carrying or possessing certain weapons in a public library IF THAT IS WHAT THE GOVERNING BODY OF THE LIBRARY WANTS TO HAPPEN. All control remains with your board or governing body." (2/27/2017, p. 33)
Heezen is less likely mistaken as he is to be lying. SB 115, in its current form, does not allow for individual libraries to set their policies. What the law, NRS 202.265 does, allows is for schools, colleges, universities, and hypothetically libraries to individually decide who will get permission to carry. One has to apply for written permission individually on a case-by-case basis. LVCCLD, if it went to far to break the law and try to re-write the law, will certainly deny permission. Knowledge of this distinction is hinted at in an email from Betsy Ward, dated 2/21/2017 (p. 4).
LVCCLD's emails and arguments basically center around "children use the library." Adults use the library too. Parents bring their children to the library. Shame on us gun owners for thinking that parents and other patrons ought to be able to protect themselves, their kids, and their fellow citizens from murderers.
LVCCLD says that it wants to provide a place that has similar "protection" against "dangerous" weapons. If the LVCCLD and others in the library/education world were truly as open minded as they claim to be, they would know that disarming law abiding citizens is not protection and no weapon is as dangerous as a homicidal human being.
