You’ll be able to store your gun on visit to courthouse

You’ll soon be able to take a gun into the Sedgwick County Courthouse and have a place to store it near the front entrance.

Sedgwick County commissioners voted 3-2 on Wednesday to spend $64,318 to place gun lockers and an enclosure around them in the courthouse lobby for visitors to use.

The project will include about 20 gun lockers. It will be funded from the county’s capital improvement reserves. It probably will be put out for bid next year.

Kansas allows concealed or open carry by residents who can legally possess a gun. But anyone who now comes to the courthouse with a gun is turned away, said Steve Claassen, the county operations support services director.

The county already owns the gun lockers; the project would install the enclosure around the lockers. The enclosure will be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“This project would provide a reasonably safe place for those folks to stow that firearm while they are in the building,” he said.

Commissioners Jim Howell, Richard Ranzau and Karl Peterjohn voted to approve the project. Tim Norton and Dave Unruh voted no.

Howell, who pushed for more expansive gun-carrying laws as a state representative, said visitors should be able to practice their Second Amendment rights on the way to the courthouse.

“They’re here because they have to do business in this building. … People have a right to be protected,” Howell said. “I trust our citizens the same as I trust the police officers. I think they’re trained and experienced to handle these firearms.”

Unruh, who has a concealed-carry permit, said providing gun lockers is not an essential service.

“I have a hard time believing people are that fearful walking from their car to the lobby of the courthouse,” Unruh said. “This was about throwing guns in our lobby. And it doesn’t seem necessary to me.”

Locker procedures

Courthouse Police Chief Darrell Haynes said visitors could be given a key, could place their gun in a locker and could be given a laminated card with that locker’s number on it.

Haynes said officers would stand outside the locker area watching people put their guns in the lockers. He said the county could add another set of 20 lockers if the demand is high.

“I really don’t ever think we’d get past 40 guns at one time,” Haynes said.

Assistant County Counselor Jon Von Achen addressed concerns from Unruh about whether the county would be liable in the event of an accident.

“Is there an additional risk of something happening? I think the answer is clearly yes,” Von Achen said. “Do we have any additional legal exposure from a liability standpoint? The answer is no.”

Claassen said the current courthouse police staff will have to “keep an eye in making sure that the weapons are not handled in a cavalier way,” an additional duty that could slow down the lines of people going through the metal detectors.

‘Protecting individual freedom’

Norton expressed some safety concerns if the gun lockers will be monitored with existing courthouse police staffing levels.

“There could be a misuse without some kind of oversight,” Norton said.

Both Norton and Unruh said they got e-mails from residents who thought the gun lockers were an unnecessary use of county dollars or who wanted gun owners to pay to use the lockers. Ranzau said he has heard from residents, including women, concerned about protecting themselves on the way to the courthouse.

“Protecting individual freedom is an essential function of the government,” Ranzau said. “In fact, it is the core function of government.”

Ranzau criticized commissioners for underestimating safety concerns when they enter the courthouse through a more secure entrance.

“They face a lot less risk than anyone else to actually enter this building. So it’s easy why they may not understand that,” Ranzau said.

Peterjohn noted the 2010 Kansas constitutional amendment in favor of the right to bear arms. He wasn’t swayed by other commissioners’ concerns about the cost of the project.

“We’ve taken up off-budget items literally in the millions throughout the middle of the year,” he said.

Ranzau also said some commissioners’ concern for the taxpayer was hypocritical given their support for “nanny and welfare state ideologies,” referring to Norton and Unruh approving the Women, Infants and Children grant last week to pay for two additional health department positions.

“The opposition really isn’t about money. It goes back to the same ideological arguments,” Ranzau said.

Candidates weigh in

The makeup of the commission will be different next year, when it votes on the contract to build the enclosure and place the gun lockers in the lobby.

Peterjohn lost his District 3 seat in the August primary, and Norton faces an opponent for re-election in District 2.

Goddard Mayor and commission District 3 candidate Marcey Gregory said after the meeting she would have voted against the project.

“If I want to carry, I’m going to leave it in my car,” Gregory said.

David Dennis, her opponent in District 3, said he wished they had more options for the lockers but that he probably would have voted for the project.

“I don’t really know that they’ve explored all the options they could have on how to protect the public coming into the building,” Dennis said.

Either Dennis or Gregory will replace Peterjohn.

Michael O’Donnell, Norton’s District 2 opponent, was not at the meeting but said he would have supported the gun lockers.

“Government should make accommodations for gun owners,” O’Donnell said.

This story was originally published October 12, 2016 at 1:05 PM with the headline "You’ll be able to store your gun on visit to courthouse."