Push is on to ease Arizona’s gun laws

Arizona has always held tightly to its legacy as part of the gun-toting Wild West and a protector of individual rights.

This year, the state’s Republican governor and a conservative Legislature may continue that tradition by giving Arizonans some of the least-restrictive weapons laws in the nation.

This session, state lawmakers have proposed more than a dozen bills on expanding rights to carry and use guns and knives.

The proposed laws would allow people to carry concealed weapons without a permit, end requirements that guns manufactured and kept in Arizona be registered, and allow university professors to carry guns on school grounds.

Although the number of bills on the subject is not unusual, weapons-rights supporters believe this year – with a conservative governor, a Legislature sympathetic to their cause and more freedom to address issues other than the budget – may be their year to lift many limits. It also is an election year, and gun rights have always been a popular campaign platform among conservatives.

“Arizona is very gun-friendly, and we’ve made a lot of progress over the past probably 10 to 12 years,” weapons-rights lobbyist Todd Rathner said. “But, right now, the Legislature and the governor are favorable to a pro-Second Amendment agenda, so we’re trying to accomplish as much as we can.”

Weapons advocates are so optimistic about their chances this year that a knife-rights advocacy group hopes to use Arizona to launch a national effort to give state Legislatures exclusive authority over local governments to regulate knife use. -[source]