Gun bill giving sheriff right to inspect homes pulled by Washington lawmakers
Washington lawmakers have pulled a contentious provision from a gun-control bill posted on the state’s legislative tracking website, after calling a section that gave law enforcement authority to enter homes and check for proper weapons storage a “mistake.”
The Seattle Times reports that Seattle trial lawyer Lance Palmer first raised doubts about Senate Bill 5737 to the newspaper, complaining: “They always say, we’ll never go house to house to take your guns away. But then you see this, and you have to wonder.”
Mr. Palmer was referring to a now-scrapped section of the text that gave the local sheriff the right to conduct home searches for proper storage guns once each year. The text of the bill — prior to its scrapping — read, as reported by The Seattle Times: “In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing shall … safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection.”
Violators — those who wouldn’t let the sheriff inside to inspect — could get up to a year in jail, The Seattle Times reported. Even Mr. Palmer, a self-described liberal, found the provision distasteful.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/20/gun-bill-giving-sheriff-right-inspect-homes-pulled/
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