Concealed Guns to Be OK Throughout Alaska

Starting Wednesday, handgun owners will be allowed to carry concealed weapons without a permit in the seven Alaska cities where permits are now required.

Gun owners also will be allowed to keep their firearms in their vehicles, even if a car is parked on private property where the owner has a no-gun policy.

Some police chiefs say that local ordinances that ban guns from public buildings such as city halls will no longer be enforceable.

The new law forbids municipalities from passing gun laws that are more restrictive than state law.

The National Rifle Assn., which helped Republican state Rep. Mike Chenault draft the new law, said the organization wanted to prevent cities from passing restrictive laws.

“We are looking to make it uniform to all 50 states,” spokeswoman Kelly Hobbs said from the NRA’s Fairfax, Va., headquarters. “Without it, it creates an unfair, inconsistent and confusing patchwork of local firearm ordinances.”

Chenault said a law-abiding citizen should be able to carry a firearm wherever he wanted to, but in Alaska, that citizen might break the law and not know it.

“You could leave Homer with a gun in your vehicle and find yourself in conflict with laws in other municipalities just by driving through those municipalities,” he said.

The part of the law that most concerns police chiefs is the lifting of bans on guns in public buildings. That could leave government workers inside vulnerable to attack, Anchorage Police Chief Walter Monegan said.

“There are lots of people -- myself included -- we really value our constitutional rights,” Monegan said. “But if we had the same enthusiasm to also support our constitutional responsibilities, then I would be less concerned over this issue.”

The new law would allow cities to keep guns out of places beyond a restricted access point, such as a metal detector, but the chiefs say their cities can’t afford to staff and equip such points.

And “it runs counter to the intent of public buildings to establish the checkpoints,” Juneau Police Chief Richard Gummow said.

Chenault said his interpretation of the new law differed. State law now does not specifically prohibit weapons in municipal buildings, but it does in state buildings. If municipalities pass their own weapons bans for public buildings, those laws shouldn’t be considered any more restrictive than the state’s ban, he said.

But he acknowledged that it could take a court challenge to see if his interpretation is correct.

The police chiefs are less concerned about the concealed-weapons permits. Two years ago, the Legislature removed the requirement for a permit to carry a concealed weapon, but the state continues to issue them.

The NRA says those permits are still required in seven cities: Anchorage, Bethel, Juneau, Petersburg, Sitka, Valdez and Wasilla.