gutshot II
Regular Member
Recently, a message was sent by our website, KC3.com. The message contained a picture of a sign on a county building in Scott County and asked about it. The sign warns everyone that "Carrying Concealed Deadly Weapons is Prohibited on All County Property". This is, of course, illegal. Local governments are limited to prohibiting concealed weapons in BUILDINGS. Here is a picture of the sign: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tz5ogr1igd4pobs/ScottCo.Sign.pdf?dl=0 We were unsure whether this was just the one sign or if this was typical of all signs in Scott Co. After some investigation and sending an Open Records Request to Scott Co. officials we found out that their ordinance from 1996 says exactly that. Here is their ordinance #96-11: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7xkmm8kr32ji4p2/ORD.pdf?dl=0 It has been my experience that if there is one gun violation, there will be more. Once they get started, they can't stop. So, we dug a little deeper and found this personnel policy: Except as provided in KRS 527.020, an employee shall not be in possession of deadly weapons on county premises, including personal vehicles and county-owned vehicles, unless he/she is required to carry a weapon as a job requirement. Deadly weapon shall be defined as: Any weapon from which a shot, readily capable of producing death or other serious physical injury, may be discharged; and/or Any knife, except an ordinary pocketknife or other knife routinely used in the performance of county duties. This is the same wording we found at Lexington and Nicholasville and again, it is illegal. This morning, I sent an email to the County Judge/Exec. of Scott County explaining all of this and registering KC3's complaint over these actions. Judge Covington called me this afternoon and acknowledged his receipt of that email and asked a few questions. He was very polite and pleasant. He said that he had asked the County Attorney to look it over and they would decide what to do, but certainly would obey the law, whatever it is. He promised to get back to me with a formal response soon. This ordinance and the signs that go with it have been in existence for 23 years. I think the personnel policy has been around since the seventies. Nobody has noticed them or complained about them, until now. We'll see how this works out. |