Second Amendment Foundation condemns media bias
courtesy SAF

Park City, Utah officials are the latest in a series of local government functionaries who have been forced – kicking and screaming – by the Second Amendment Foundation to respect the Constitution and repeal illegal gun control laws. SAF has run up an impressive number of wins protecting Second Amendment rights. They’ve become the ACLU of the gun culture.

In the Park City case the ski resort town and home to the Sundance Film Festival had adopted local laws in direct violation of the Second Amendment and Utah’s state preemption law. The city prohibited all use and possession of firearms, the carrying of concealed weapons, carrying of loaded guns inside a vehicle, and drawing or showing a gun in “an angry or threatening manner” (no exceptions for justified use of force).

A city attorney, Tricia Lake, was clear about the illegality of the city’s prohibitions. From parkrecord.com:

“Had the City Council not repealed the sections, the restrictions “would amount to unlawfully restricting an individual’s rights under the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution . . . ” as well as rights outlined in the Utah Constitution, the report said.

Shockingly, council members were not happy about being required to comply with the Constitution.

City Councilor Liza Simpson said it was “simply irritating.” Simpson said she would not be the City Councilor who made the motion to approve the repeal.

“Do we have to,” Cindy Matsumoto, another member of the City Council, said.

The council reluctantly voted to repeal the illegal anti-gun laws yesterday. Another victory for SAF and Americans’ gun rights.

©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.

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41 COMMENTS

  2. I’m picturing Liza Simpson, face down on the floor, crying, kicking her toes into the carpet and beating it with her fists.
    While we, as parents, sit back and laugh.

  3. Huh. I didn’t even know I was breaking an illegal law till just now. All of them in fact. Of course, with the exception of brandishing a weapon.

    • Same here. I’ve skied Park City, The Canyons, and Deer Valley several times since I first went there in 1998. More laws that do nothing except punish legal gun owners. I hate to think what would have happened if I was pulled over for speeding or something.

    • In other news, Park City and The Canyons will be under the same management soon, Vail Ski Company. A lift will be operated to make skiing both convenient.

      I knew about Aspen’s old mag limit (whew!), but didn’t have a clue about Park City’s rules. I’m fond of Deer Valley, but have always stayed in Park City. Who knew? Were there signs?

    • Yeah no kidding… This is ridiculous, I would really expect to at least know I’m breaking the law. The idiocy is spreading in this fine state and I’m sick and tired. Utah was pretty reasonable unless it had to do with alcohol and in that respect we are behind the times. Park city- Thanks for trying to oppress me because you had a “let’s all hug” agenda.

  5. You know what I find really amazing is that the ACLU has not said one thing about our Constitutional Rights being trampled by the current administration…..the ACLU should be having a field day protecting the American people from the crazy in the White House……but not a peep…..so this leads me to believe that the ACLU is very one sided and if that is the case then they should loose their tax free status……you work for everyone or you don’t work at all.

    • Better idea: how about make it easier to achieve tax-exempt status? Or eliminate corporate income taxes entirely, thus allowing organizations like the SAF to operate without having IRS harrassment?

      • A good measure of how far the progressive agenda has advanced is how often people blindly accept the outside that government should be involved in things without realizing it. Myself, and likely yourself, at times.

        We’ve come to accept that part of our income, personal and corporate, should be going to government by default and debate over the percentage.

        This isn’t the perfect comment for illustrating this, but past attention to how often people use words like “allow,” showing a conditioning to accept a premise of prohibition by default.

    • True with respect to the national organization, which remains committed to its long held belief that the 2A guarantees only a communal (state) right, not an individual right, but not necessarily true as to local chapters that have accepted that Heller is the law of the land and settles the subject.

  6. Just donated to the SAF for the first time after seeing this. These are small but important victories. Good for them.

    • They were very instrumental in forcing Illinois to recognize our right to carry concealed. For which I rewarded them with a life time membership. They do great things.

  7. We go to Salt Lake and Park City ski resorts regularly (Hills in Wisconsin are for warm up).
    I never have carried while actually snowboarding but my CCW is recoprocated in Utah.
    Board and boots off, Shield goes on.
    Didn’t realize we might have violating while in Park City proper.

    • You weren’t. Unconstitutional laws have no legal authority. Sure they would arrest you all the same, but my point is more about the premises we get duped into accepting thought the linguistic framing of certain ideas. By accepting that you were in violation while the law stood, you imply that the law was valid until repealed by the same city government that passed the law in the first place, all without realizing it.

  8. I bet if the punishment for making an illegal law were the same as breaking said illegal law, there would be less illegal laws.

    • That is a slippery slope there. Next you will want police officers to get tickets for speeding, parking on the roadside without any lights on, and well everything else they do that we would get in trouble for. The government would then have no workers because all of them would be in prison for treason, laundering money, conspiracy, and stealing money from all of us… Wait that actually sounds like what greater men than I would have called FREEDOM.

  9. I like the state-level laws that not only preempt local restrictions on guns but penalize the municipality for violating them… without it you’ll see this over and over again, restrictions followed by them being withdrawn after gun-proponents have spent plenty of time and money fighting them up to the point of victory.

    • We have it correct here in Florida. Its the party or person that is held personaly responsible both legally and or financially if they pose a local law that is covered by preemption.
      As it should be.
      You want to be a crooked mayor and make a local law prohibiting guns from a say a county or City Hall.
      The individual is held responsible 100%.
      Also as it should be. Like it or not.
      Our preemption laws here have teeth.
      And they will and do bite back.

  10. Oh the shame of it having to follow the laws of the land.
    Just remember all, its for the children.

  14. Dean: As to your inquiry, why a small Utah town of 8,000 souls would have had such laws, the saying is “Park City is in Utah, but not of Utah,” It’s just a nice high-end (well, Deer Valley) resort for people mostly from the coasts, in my experience. Mitt sold his vacation house there a few years back. No major airport in the U.S. has more pleasant staff, including TSA, than Salt Lake, IMHO. No state has better snow.

    • San Diego paper with Brady presser on Peruta intervention appeal. Now the SD Sheriff website reference to doing things ” the same way they have heen”, and dodgy responses from the clerks at the Ninth, cited by callers from Calguns, for delay of mandate are making sense. I guess Kamala Harris and Brady wanted a “friday news dump” effect, just before Thanksgiving, to minimize the obvious contradiction between denying a citizen the simple right to self defenee, while the tumult around Ferguson, is making it so obvious just why you might want that option.

      http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/nov/26/concealed-gun-appeal-en-banc-brady-peruta/

      Remember, citizens of LA, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away….or, as in the 1992 Rodney King Riots, only four weeks away….

  17. As a recent Salt Lake City transplant (less than a week), I hadn’t heard Park City had such a “law” in effect, but sure am glad SAF brought them into line. Will surely be sending them some cash after the holidays.

  18. Haha oops. Guess we can add “Park City carry” to a disturbingly long list of times I’ve been breakin the law, breakin the law, without knowing it.
    This keeps up, I’ll be ready for congress in no time!

  19. Utah doesn’t allow for preemption of that sort anyway. Park City’s old “law” was unenforceable.

  20. I don’t understand. I spent a week in Park City in June. Carried everywhere, as did my wife. Didn’t seem to be a problem.

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