Citizens will soon be allowed to carry concealed firearms into the Wyoming Capitol after the state’s top five elected officials voted Wednesday morning to ease weapons restrictions inside the seat of state government.
The timeline for implementing the rules is still uncertain.
The State Building Commission — composed of the governor, treasurer, secretary of state, superintendent of public instruction and auditor — unanimously agreed to allow concealed guns only in publicly accessible areas of the Capitol building. They are continuing to review gun rules in other state office buildings more broadly.
Acceding to long-standing demands from the growing right-wing faction of the Legislature that citizens be empowered to carry firearms into government buildings, while also trying to deliberate on public safety, the commission created a patchwork of rules that for now would allow guns in some but not all parts of the Capitol.
The commission backed the rules despite a majority of the public comment it had solicited opposing the change. Though only 56 people responded to the commission’s call for public input, 36 of those respondents opposed the new rule.
Allowing concealed carry into state buildings more broadly remains limited by statutes prohibiting firearms in public meetings. The Legislature last year voted to repeal those statutes, but Gov. Mark Gordon vetoed the legislation, promising instead to kick off the rule-making process that led to Wednesday’s vote.
Ahead of that vote, staff informed the commission that those statutes could still cloud implementation of the new rules in the short term. In a press release after the vote, Secretary of State Chuck Gray said the new rules were undercut by Gordon’s previous veto, and he called on lawmakers to bring a new bill repealing the gun statutes.
The building commission controls the entire Capitol building only when the Legislature is out of session. With lawmakers convening on Tuesday, it will be up to the Legislature’s newly elected leadership, which is dominated by conservatives who support opening state buildings to gun-carrying citizens, to make the next move.
Wednesday’s rules do not allow concealed carry in the Herschler Building, an office building that abuts the Capitol and is connected to it by a tunnel. Concealed carry will remain against the rules in that building, which houses the Department of Education and the Secretary of State’s Office, at least until the commission takes its next step.
Timeline for change
It remains uncertain whether people will be able to carry hidden firearms at the start of the fast-approaching session, which is scheduled to last through March 6.
Staff attorneys at the Legislative Service Office — the nonpartisan staff that assist lawmakers — will now review the rules, and it will then fall to legislative leadership to accept or reject them. If lawmakers don’t act within 40 days, staff for the State Building Commission said the rules would go into place. That would open public areas of the Capitol building to concealed carry sometime in February, during the session.
But a committee attorney said there was a window for legislative leadership to accelerate its approval of the rules, if they directed their attorneys to prioritize reviewing the rules over the large amount of bill writing facing them.
LSO attorneys usually do not conduct rule reviews during or just ahead of a legislative session. But Gray, who closely aligns with the right-wing Wyoming Freedom Caucus that currently controls leadership in the House, suggested leadership would likely push for an immediate review of this rule.
“I think (the delay) would be superseded here just because of the importance of it,” Gray said.
Rule limitations
Gray accused his colleagues of slow-walking the effort to allow guns into government buildings and of allowing them only into piecemeal areas of the Capitol, saying the public had been misleadingly “sold this bill of goods that this rule applies to the entire Capitol complex.” He attempted to amend Wednesday’s rules to allow concealed carry throughout the Capitol complex, which includes the Herschler Building as well as the Hathaway Building, which houses more agencies, and most of the state government facilities in the heart of Cheyenne. His motion did not receive a second from his colleagues, several of whom said they believed they were continuing to advance the goal of opening up state buildings to firearm carry, but in a deliberate fashion.
“I don’t think this ever was sold as a bill of goods,” Gordon said. “It was always intended to be systematic in its approach, starting with the public areas in the Capitol and then moving into the (state) agency spaces.”
Members of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus are expected to again bring legislation seeking to remove any restrictions on guns in public meetings.
Gray also questioned whether state employees themselves would be able to carry a firearm in the parts of the Capitol covered by the new rules. There was some uncertainty about whether the rule covered state employees, though Auditor Kristi Racines said the objective was to allow staffers to carry firearms in the same public parts of the Capitol as the public.
Gordon’s office is working on an executive order that would explicitly allow employees to concealed carry in the areas covered by both Wednesday’s rules and future measures, the governor said. That executive order will be “fairly broad,” Gordon said, and address explosives, knives and “efforts at intimidation.”
Editor’s note: This breaking news story has been updated to include additional information from Secretary of State Chuck Gray.
GOOD DEAL!!!
I hope this doesn’t come to pass. Completely unnecessary.
If we are lucky, they will use them on one another.
Concealed doesn’t mean unenforcable… concealed in the gun talks context means… a man carrying a firearm quietly and with no intentions of intimidation of others has the ability to save his own and possibly others lives in the event a troubled soul decided to try to take he or others lives away….
I think this is a champion step for the country.. there’s more here then simply saying “now public and employees can conceal carry in our office” ….
what’s being said here with this bill is that our law makers understand and truly believe, in the face of the mental health crisis coupled with gun violance, everyone has a right to live and since everyone can live even if mentally ill, then everyone should have a right to defend them selves, and with an equal chance at survival.
If a police is the only one left legally able to defend someone then the scales are tipped against the innocent man because guns are instant and police are not geneis.
This move also screams “watch this!!” The law makers even in washington may say they believe in arming the population but thier own buildings remain gun free zones. These law makers are saying that they feel safer in a carry zone, where they will, at least have an ability to defend them selves if the event occures.
If you have a right to live witch = a right to defend in the grocery store why would your right to live be excluded if your at work? Thats stupid and complettly backwords. Work shouldn’t take your right away. Especially the work they do. They are scared of being approached with a shooter in an area where they dont have a right to defend them selves and there for dont have a right to live. If a shooter dose show up everyone there is a sitting duck with no hope for defense…
Again the scales are imbalanced.
These guys are willing to step up and even challenge the idea that gun free zones save lives… they don’t save live. And gun carry zones won’t either but it will reduce innocent deaths and it will maybe even prevent someone from taking the chance.
Darwin has spoken.
Glad I don’t have to walk into that cess pit anymore
What is this accomplishing, exactly?
Right wing virtue signaling
Armed society is polite society. NOLA/other tragedy’s show you can’t depend on anyone but your self in bad event. Depend on cool head/firm grip/steady hand to defend your self. Firearm safety should be MANDATORY TRAINING from kindergarten thru high school. Both sexes need trained. Male/Female.
Disarm 99.99% of good people so that the .01% can ignore the “law” and carry in a gun to do harm against others.
“Gun free zones” are an open invitation for psychopaths that want to do harm to others.
Clearly the solution is to make sure not one square foot of the country isn’t occupied by at least one firearm
Hugh, the guns arent going away. Psychopaths/criminals/etc. dont follow laws restricting the carrying of firearms anywhere.
Why do YOU want to disarm good people that simply want a means of self defense against the bad actors in our society?
“the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”
Well said. Making good people helpless does not make bad people harmless. My understanding is that a concealed carry permit will still be required even though Wyoming is a Constitutional Carry state. Just because concealed carry is allowed doesn’t mean that everyone carrying concealed means harm. The next time you’re standing in line at the checkout at Walmart take a look at the people standing in line with you. How many do you suppose are carrying concealed legally and you don’t even know it? Now how many in the store might be carrying illegally with harm in mind and you don’t know that either? Myself, I’m perfectly content with the knowledge that someone is likely to be carrying legally. Sometimes that person is me n
Mr Ginter, if you’re going to quote the 2nd Amendment, please do so in it’s entirety. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”.
That amendment certainly has been interpreted differently by all sorts of people. Fine, you want to bear arms, then show them! I don’t want anyone walking around public spaces with a concealed weapon. Period.
We should be worried about the concealed carriers. Now they can bring a gun, and not all of these people are good-right?
Despite overwhelming opposition by the public to concealed carry in the Capitol the measure will go forward. So much for the value of public input. Still, what could possibly go wrong, what with legislators haggling over hot button issues and the odd person in the gallery with a grudge to bear? Guns okay in the Capitol Building but not in the Herschler Building? “Concealed”means no one would know if a person with a firearm might wander through the tunnel fully armed. Concealed means unenforceable.