Missouri state Representative-elect Nick Schroer (R-O’Fallon) is introducing legislation that will allow concealed carriers to sue if injured in a gun-free business.
HB 96 “would apply when a person who is authorized to carry a firearm [but] is prohibited from doing so by a business and is then injured by another person or an animal.” This would hold anti-gun business owners accountable for denying the Second Amendment rights of their fellow citizens.
According to the Springfield News-Leader, the language of the bill makes clear that the concealed carrier’s obligation would be to show that they could have used a gun to prevent the injury from occurring. Beyond that, the bill rests on the fact that the business owners “assume custodial responsibility for the safety and defense of any person” who is on their property for lawful business.
Schroer’s bill will offer a broad protection for all law-abiding citizens in Missouri, as that state allows concealed carry without a permit. This means any law-abiding citizens harmed in a gun-free business–in a manner that could been have averted if they had been armed–will be able to make a case against the business, granted that they can show they would have been carrying a gun were it not for the “gun-free” designation on the establishment.
The Representative-elect found motivation for the bill in an out-of-state example that cost many lives. That example is the July 2012 Aurora, Colorado, movie theater attack. He notes a fact that gun control groups and their surrogates in the media glossed over–that the theater was a gun-free zone. Schroer said, “[The Aurora theater] almost put a target on the back of all the customers there that had to disarm themselves.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.