Raymore overrides veto; gun decision final
Posted by GSDispatch Editor in GSD Online, source: THE STAR HERALD
By Allen Edmonds, The Star Herald
After seven months of battle, the Raymore City Council finalized the contentious gun issue on Monday night, with a 7-1 vote to override Mayor Juan Alonzo’s veto of the bill. The vote clears the way for concealed-weapon qualified citizens to carry weapons on city property, and for similarly qualified council members to carry into council meetings.
Citizens are prohibited by state law from carrying weapons to council meetings – which was the heart of Alonzo’s opposition to the bill. Council member Charlene Hubach also opposed the bill from the start, questioning the need for anyone to carry weapons onto city property, and particularly for council members to carry into public meetings.
That was also the stance of defeated council member Monique Lewis, who has teamed with former council member Ivan Waite and others to force a public vote on the issue through an initiative petition. John Seimears, who also lost in April, opposed the bill due to the perceived unfairness to citizens attending council meetings.
Alonzo from the start has called it a Second Amendment Issue. The bill “arms the government while disarming the citizens,” he said. But bill sponsor Jeff Cox strongly disagreed. On numerous occasions he told the council and citizens that his bill creates “as much Second Amendment freedom as we’re allowed by law to have in this city,” he said. If state law allowed it, he said, he would have no issue with qualified citizens carrying weapons into public meetings, “but that’s not the case right now.”
Monday’s override vote was taken without comment, but it followed brief addresses by supporters of both sides.
Citizen Charles Crain told the council that it was time to “get this issue behind us.”
Crain said Kansas City media has ignored the fact that many other municipalities have the same law already in place, “and they’re calling us gunslingers from the Wild West.”
He said the extended debate on a law that simply allows all the freedoms allowed by the state has created a situation where Raymore is being subjected to such derision.
Meanwhile, Waite urged council members to rethink their position, or the citizens would rethink it for them.
“This committee of petitioners and many other citizens of this city of Raymore strongly believe this critical issue of public safety of carrying concealed weapons in this City Hall and other buildings under the control of the City of Raymore should be a decision by our citizens at the voting polls, rather than by a majority vote of the elected members of the city council.
The petition committee is comprised of himself and Lewis, as well as Lee Hankins, Edward Kopetsky and Edward Williams, he said. [...]
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