What would you do if police stopped you with a gun in your car?

Now that it’s legal to carry a loaded gun in a car without a permit, a Wichita state senator says Kansas needs procedures for police and motorists to use when they interact to avoid potentially deadly misunderstandings.

Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, D-Wichita, has asked the legislative revisor’s office to draft a bill to require gun-carrying motorists to notify police that they have a weapon when they are stopped for a traffic infraction and set standard procedures for officers to follow in those situations.

She plans for it to be ready for the Legislature to consider when it returns to session in January.

Faust-Goudeau said she was spurred to take action after a string of police shootings that have led to protest, violence and rioting across the country.

“Whether you’re black, white or a man or a woman, it shouldn’t be like this,” Faust-Goudeau said. “We should have a little more concern for human life on both ends.”

Under the “constitutional carry” law passed by the Legislature last year, anyone who can legally own a gun can carry it in public, concealed or openly, without a permit.

If a police officer pulls over a motorist and sees a gun lying on the seat of the car, the officer can’t even ask why it’s there unless there’s some other indication of possible criminal activity, said Wichita Police Chief Gordon Ramsay.

“It’s hindering our ability to keep guns away from the bad guys,” he said. “It’s also unnerving.”

Ramsay said he hasn’t seen Faust-Goudeau’s bill yet, but he welcomes the attention to the issue and plans to discuss it with her, other police chiefs and patrol officers.

“I think it’s important we have discussions like this, if there can be legislation to help us address the issue,” he said.

Faust-Goudeau said she still strongly opposes laws that passed in the past few years that allow concealed carry without permits, guns on college campuses and non-police public employees to carry weapons on the job.

But with that being the situation, she said it’s necessary to make some rules so innocent people – ordinary citizens or officers – don’t end up in deadly confrontations.

She said a big part of the inspiration for her bill was the July 6 shooting of Philando Castile in a suburb of St. Paul, Minn.

Castile, a black school cafeteria supervisor, was shot to death by a police officer during a traffic stop after telling the officer he had a concealed weapon permit and had a gun in the car.

The case became national news when the aftermath of the shooting was broadcast live on the Internet by Castile’s girlfriend, who was in the car with her young daughter.

The Castile incident was only one instance of police shootings that have dominated news programs this summer, and something needs to be done to prevent fear and tension between police and the citizenry, Faust-Goudeau said.

While Kansas hasn’t yet had the kind of high-profile shootings that other states have, Faust-Goudeau said a standardized process for traffic stops could defuse situations and make everybody safer.

“This is just occurring too often and you know, it’s scary,” she said. “It’s dangerous and it’s deadly and if we can nip this in the bud to have a universal procedure here in Kansas, hopefully we’ll be able to prevent some of those incidents like we’re watching on TV.”

This story was originally published September 28, 2016 at 8:58 AM with the headline "What would you do if police stopped you with a gun in your car?."