"Gun owners miffed by SLC airport's confusing no-firearms signs"

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Gun owners miffed by SLC airport's confusing no-firearms signs
By Brandon Loomis 
The Salt Lake (UT) Tribune


It doesn't take a genius to know you can't tote your .40-caliber Glock
through the metal detector at Salt Lake City International Airport. It does
take a book of statutes to decipher the no-guns-allowed sign at the airport
door, though. 

It implies that you can't pack inside the terminal, but it lists a state law
that says you can. 

"The average citizen has to be a lawyer or a mind-reader to figure out what
that sign means," said Mike Stollenwerk, a Virginia-based gun-rights
advocate who has asked the airport to remove the signs. Utah gun owners
likewise complain of the mixed message, and some proudly ignore the warning.


That's their right, and no one is stopping them, airport officials say. 

"The public area - the ticket counter, terminal, lobby - is public," city
airport spokeswoman Barbara Gann said. "The laws that apply to public areas
apply there." 

The law mentioned on the sign, Utah Code 76-10-529, allows concealed-weapons
permittees to carry their guns as permitted and most everyone else to carry
in plain sight, with an empty chamber, in most public places. 

Anyone strolling out of the short-term parking garage toward the sliding
glass doors by the car rental desks learns that smoking is prohibited within
25 feet of the entrance and it's a "prohibited area for all weapons."
Except, as airport officials acknowledge, the prohibited area doesn't start
until passengers walk past the baggage claims and ticket counters and queue
up for the security checkpoint. 

The signs alert people early so they won't walk into a problem, Gann said.
Though Stollenwerk e-mailed the airport about the confusion, Gann said
there's no plan to change. 

Kevin Jensen is a Utah member of Stollenwerk's opencarry.org Internet
community, and he gladly responded when Stollenwerk put out a call for a
local to photograph the premature signs for his Web site. He, with his Model
23 .40-caliber Glock, and wife Clachelle, with her Model 26 Glock 9 mm,
stood smiling by the door as his sister-in-law snapped a shot of them last
month. 

Jensen sees the signs as a nuisance to the uninformed, but he knows better.
He arms himself for airport trips because he believes that supposedly
gun-free zones are dangerous. "When someone has posted that they don't allow
weapons, criminals see that as an opportunity," he said. 

That hypothetical criminal is a bogeyman to Steven Gunn of the Gun Violence
Prevention Center of Utah. He knows state law allows guns into the airport,
but he wishes it didn't. There are plenty of authorities with guns at the
airport, he said. 

"If you've got a concealed weapon, don't try to protect me," he said. "I'll
take my chances with the security forces." 

Clark Aposhian of the Utah Shooting Sports Council said he plans to visit
the airport and ask again for the signs' relocation. 

"If I'm going to pick up folks or drop off my wife at the airport, I carry a
firearm wherever I go," he said. "It's the law. I obey the law, and I expect
the state and municipalities to know and obey the law."


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