Three days, two gun bills in Kansas Legislature

It’s the third day of the legislative session and already two gun bills are on the agenda — one that would make it harder for terrorism suspects to buy weapons and another that would clear the way for the carrying of guns inside the Saline County Courthouse.

House Bill 2452, by Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, would make it a crime to sell a firearm to anyone on the FBI’s Consolidated Terrorist Watch List. It would also increase the penalty for selling a gun to a person who is or has been subject to involuntary commitment for treatment of a mental illness.

House Bill 2440, by Rep. J.R. Claeys, R-Salina, would clarify a gray area of an earlier bill that allows concealed carrying of firearms in public buildings. The Claeys bill would allow Saline County to continue letting people carry guns on the first and second floors of the courthouse, while banning them on the third floor where the actual courtrooms are situated.

Ward named his bill the “Kansas Protection from Terrorists Act.”

“I think making it harder for terrorists to get guns is just common-sense gun safety,” Ward said. “This is something we can actually do to help the war on terror.”

He cited a federal Government Accountability Office report that said people on the terrorist watch list had legally purchased more than 2,000 guns from dealers between 2004 and 2014.

Approximately 700,000 individuals are on the FBI watch list, which was created in 2003 in response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

It is already illegal in Kansas to sell guns to anyone who is or has been subject to involuntary commitment for mental illness or alcohol or drug abuse.

Ward’s bill would increase the penalty for selling guns to those individuals by changing the crime from a misdemeanor to a low-level felony.

Ward acknowledged that his bill won’t entirely cut off access to guns for terrorism suspects or those with dangerous varieties of mental illness, because they might still be able to buy out of state, at gun shows or on the black market.

But he said it will at least make it harder than walking into a gun shop and buying over the counter.

“If it prevents one person (from committing a mass shooting), it will be a success,” he said.

Claeys said his bill was written specifically to address an issue that has arisen at the Saline County Courthouse.

Current law states that public agencies can close off a building to gun carrying only if they have metal screening and armed guards at the building entrances, Claeys said.

That’s a problem at the Salina county building, which has open access to the first and second floors, and only those patrons going to the third-floor courts have to go through weapons screening, he said.

Claeys said he checked with the attorney general’s office and was told that under current law, the county would have to screen all visitors to the building to close any part of the building to guns.

HB 2440 “wouldn’t require them to have all or nothing,” Claeys said.

This story was originally published January 13, 2016 at 6:26 PM with the headline "Three days, two gun bills in Kansas Legislature."