Louisiana lawmakers have voted to ease restrictions on gun bans in public buildings. Specifically, they voted to allow Louisiana lawmakers to carry concealed weapons into public buildings, as an amendment to an existing law that prohibits anyone from being able to do that. The bill was proposed by State Senator Bret Allain, who said lawmakers need the exemption because “they often face threats of violence.”
The state Senate voted to approve the bill, and it was passed just yesterday by the state House. The bill [PDF] says that proposed law will allow “an active reserve or auxiliary law enforcement officer in the actual discharge of his duties to carry a firearm on a school campus or bus.”
However, it ends up going beyond that and into giving members of the Louisiana legislature the right to carry concealed weapons in public buildings.
Proposed law retains present law and further provides that present law does not prohibit a member or officer of either house of the legislature from possessing and concealing a handgun on his person provided that the legislator or officer is POST qualified annually in the use of firearms
One House Republican suggested they amend it to say anyone with a concealed carry permit could do so, but another argued that the exemption “does not create a special class for lawmakers; it only adds them to an existing one.”
[h/t Raw Story]
[image via Shutterstock]
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