The Utah Firearms Association OPPOSES this Bill.
This bill is currently in our Bill Tracker. You can monitor it’s status from there. The full body of the bill can be viewed on the le.utah.gov site here.
- To email, SMS or call your representative about this bill, find your legislator’s contact information here at le.utah.gov.
- To contact the sponsor, Representative Weight, email elizabethweight@le.utah.gov or call or text 385-272-1413.
Overview
This bill criminalizes “unsafe” storage in broad and capricious terms, using language that creates several avenues for the owner or custodian of a firearm to become subject to legal trouble in the event that a firearm, “improperly stored,” is misused by another party.
Every gun owner is interested in preventing unauthorized access to their firearms; there is significant potential for headache and heartache should the guns fall into the hands of criminals, young children, or others who should not have access to your firearms.
However, mandating “safe storage” requirements is not the way to prevent this.
Ineffective, In Bad-Faith, and Duplicitous
The Utah Firearms Association strongly opposes this proposed regulation on these grounds:
- State and federal statutes already exist in regard to penalizing those who facilitate firearms knowingly to prohibited parties, and in the circumstances around negligence leading to harm.
- Every individual has different life circumstances and needs, therefore different storage requirements. Creating a blanket penalty for “unsafe storage” is not an effective way to address the need for proper firearm storage.
- Safe, effective and proper storage of firearms is a education issue, not a legislative one. This bill does not have any provision intended to address this.
We encourage every gun owner to honestly and thoroughly vet their own individual storage needs, for the safety of themselves and those in their homes. Your circumstances and household will dictate the appropriate storage requirements, and there are a multitude of companies offering inventive, affordable, and effective storage solutions for any household’s safety needs.
We urge you to contact both the sponsor of this bill, as well as your own Representatives, and recommend they oppose this bill.