Bill Tallen

A couple of recent legislative dramas provide examples of this ‘law’ in action. As an astute lawyer once put it, “No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” But ironically, sometimes members of the political class, or their foot soldiers in this cause or that, go so far in their enthusiasm that they get a result opposite of what they intended. 

Our Legislature is still in session, but remarkably, we seem to be fairly safe. Washington, D.C. is in turmoil, with more rats than we ever imagined jumping ship in terror; imagine being stuck in your pajamas at home without your U.S. government paycheck! But each venue provides an example of my theme. I apologize in advance, that both examples involve firearms, and I promise to take a breath and write about something else soon. But not today.

Watching our Senate Judiciary Committee live on YouTube last Tuesday, considering HB 172 (Repeal Gun Free Zones), I saw the heart-wringing testimony of one earnest educator after another unable to find any wisdom or merit in the presence of firearms in schools, in the hands of citizens with concealed carry permits, the most law-abiding subset of the American population. Many of them, evidently well-coached by their political minders, took pains to point out that they favor “local control” which in this context means letting each school board in the state decide whether it will allow vetted, trained, volunteer employes of the district to carry concealed firearms for the protection of innocent lives. That has been, so far, the only work-around to the federal Gun Free School Zones Act of the 1990s, and it’s been the law in Wyoming since 2017. Schools in the five districts out of 48 with school boards smarter than the norm, which have enacted and implemented armed staff policies, are arguably safer against the mass shooter threat, and by the way also perfectly safe against all the much-ballyhooed scare scenarios like lost guns or crazed teachers on a rampage. 

But the reason that law passed so easily in 2017 was precisely because the education lobby bowed out of the fight. You see, they accepted “local control” because they were more confident of winning the fight in each local school district than in the state Legislature. And they were, unfortunately for us, correct. So here they were in the Judiciary Committee extolling “local control” which to them means “gun control” and undefended schoolchildren.

We’ve all had enough of that charade. I’m a fan of the 2017 law, and still believe it provides a better actual defense against active shooters — a trained cadre of school employees who are almost always present, who train hard and specifically for the school environment and for close cooperation with first responders, who have a direct personal stake in the safety of their schools — than any maybe-there, maybe-not citizen with a concealed carry permit but none of that training. But it hasn’t caught on, and leaves most Wyoming schools woefully unprepared. 

By holding the line in their various school districts against these armed staff programs they’ve contributed to the passage of SF196, which will soon dictate that they live with weapons in the hands of any member of the public with a concealed carry permit, in their schools. The actual presence of such folks is probably going to be relatively rare, but the possibility will provide some degree of deterrence, and at least a chance of a successful defense if an event does occur. Take that, you hoplophobic educators! Not quite what you wanted or expected, is it?

Here's my second example, also firearms related, but this time on the federal level. The U.S. Congress is considering a nationwide concealed carry reciprocity law — which basically means that each state, regardless of how it governs or restricts concealed carry by its own citizens, would have to honor the concealed carry permits of travelers from another state. Now, I kind of like the notion, because I don’t agree with the restrictive laws of places like California and Rhode Island, and if I ever travel there, I’d prefer to be armed without worrying about criminal prosecution.  

But here may be the unintended consequence. The Tenth Amendment is, in its own way, as important for our republic as the Second. The Tenth establishes that the federal government’s powers are limited to those specifically granted in the U.S. Constitution. In their enthusiasm to expand concealed carry against the wishes of a handful of stubborn antigun states, supporters of these bills would grant authority to the federal government to regulate concealed carry. I think that’s a dangerous precedent. How will the next administration, or the one after that, apply that authority? Let’s be careful what we ask for.