Standard-Examiner Editorial: "OUR VIEW: Gun Supporters Gone Wild"

Unlike the Standard, we're not quite ready to completely dismiss the Gun Owners of Utah organization as a complete pack of right-wing looniebirds

As an apparent followup to Monday's news story, the Standard-Examiner carries a strong editorial this morning, condemning Gun Owners of Utah's (GOU) opposition to the UEG Ethics Reform Initiative, which GOU contends would lead to a (de facto) gun registry system in Utah:

• OUR VIEW: Gun supporters gone wild

While The Standard dismisses the GOU's objection outright, as an "idiotic" outburst from the Utah right wing fringe, we're not going to take that bait. We've studied GOU's online legal analysis, and we do believe GOU makes some arguable and legitimate points.

Specifically, GOU's main two-pronged argument is predicated upon language in the proposed inititive. The surprisingly cogent analysis starts out with this:

The gun registration requirement in the Government Ethics Reform Initiative can be found in two portions, both of which are on page 13. The first of these would require every member of the Utah State Legislature to submit a written "disclosure statement" each year to the Utah Independent Ethics Commission (a state-level commission that does not currently exist, but which would be established if the initiative passes). This disclosure statement would need to include the location, nature of, and fair market value of any property, real or personal, tangible or intangible (other than a primary personal residence), in which the legislator or spouse, directly or indirectly, holds an interest which is or is proposed or likely to be the subject of…. regulation by any public body."

A firearm constitutes tangible personal property, and private ownership of a firearm is subject to stringent regulation by the Utah State Legislature, the Utah Department of Public Safety, the United States Congress, and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (among others), each of which is "a public body." Thus, we believe that firearms clearly fit into the category defined by the initiative. Which means that, if you’re a state legislator, you and your spouse will have to provide the Ethics Commission with a written list of all your guns, the estimated value of each gun, and where each gun is kept. And you’ll have to do this every year.

And here's the second "prong" of the main argument:

GOUtah! and most other gun-rights groups have consistently opposed ANY law that requires ANY citizen to provide ANY government agency with a list of his privately-owned firearms. ANY such law is a gun-registration law, pure and simple, even if the text of the law does not include the words "firearm" or "register". The portion of the Government Ethics Reform Initiative described above therefore qualifies, in our opinion, as a gun-registration law. But there’s more! The second part of the registration requirement, also on page 13, says: "The disclosure statements…. contemplated in this section of this Act shall be accurate and complete; they shall be signed by legislators under penalty of perjury; and they shall be available for inspection and copying by any member of the public."

This means that if you leave one of your guns off of the disclosure statement, you’ll be guilty of perjury, which is a felony in Utah. Any felony conviction will permanently strip you of your right to possess a firearm. What’s even more alarming is that these disclosure statements will be "available for inspection and copying by any member of the public." In other words, if you’re a state legislator, any burglar or gang member will be able to make a copy of your disclosure statement, which lists all the firearms owned by you or your spouse, how much each of your guns is worth, and where they’re stored. Thus the registration clause of the Ethics Reform Initiative is even worse than existing gun-registration laws in other states, which at least keep such information confidential.

The GOA anlysis also makes a few other interesting "minor" points. We thus urge our readers to check it out with an open mind.

While the SE is correct in its contention that as a member of the general public, "If you own a gun, the ethics initiative next year is no threat to you," we also believe that the language of the initiatative, which arguably sets up a subclass (state legislators) who would be subject to gun registration, is sufficiently troubling to give Utah gun rights advocates a legitimate case of heartburn. Thus, we're not ready to blow off this organization as a complete pack of right-wing looniebirds.

As regular readers are aware, of course, Weber County Forum has been a strong advocate of the UEG Ethics Initiative; and in that connection we remain steadfast in our continuing support. We'll add that your blogmeister is also a strong Second Amendment supporter. Having said that. we'll go on to argue that while GOU may have found a flaw in the initiative language, we do not believe that flaw to be fatal however. As everyone knows, the legislature will set to work tweaking the initiative once it becomes law; and it seems to us that carving out an exception to disclosure requirements for privately-owned firearms would be a quite non-controversial matter of early legislative business.

No need to throw out the baby with the bathwater, we believe. Notably, even the GOU organization concedes it's in support of 99% of the reforms contained in the initiative. So we thus urge Utah gun rights advocates to sign the petition, and then lobby for necessary legislative tweaks. In that sense of course, we'll go along with the Standard-Examiner in supporting the initiative, and add that the UEG Initiative may very well be Utah Lumpencitizens' first and last chance to enact broad legislative ethics reform in Utah. Let's not blow it over a few minor and easily correctable defects, folks.

For those readers who haven't yet signed the petition, by the way, petitions await your signatures at these locations:

• UEG Petition Locations

That's our take; and we're stickin' to it.

And what say our gentle readers about all this?