Tucson area legislators are split on their support for Tucson City Council member Steve Kozachik’s plan to require background checks for person-to-person gun sales. The Yellow Sheet not surprisingly reports that state Representative Ethan Orr and Senator Linda Lopez have different views on the role of city and state government.
The irascible and erratic Kozachik changed his party affiliation to Democrat last week and has made every gun owner a target for his machine gun style rants in the last month. Now, Kozachik is trying to prevent the state owned Tucson Convention Center from hosting gun shows, where buyers and sellers are not required to run background checks on private sales.
Senator Lopez said she supports Kozachik’s proposal, and according to the Yellow Sheet, she called the Republican lawmakers “hypocrites for constantly railing against federal mandates and regulations, imposing mandates and regulations on cities and counties regarding guns. I always get very frustrated with my colleagues at the Legislature who rail against mandates imposed on them from Washington, but have no problem imposing mandates on local governments.”
Orr told the Yellow Sheet that he doesn’t think Kozachik should be weighing in on gun control in his capacity as a councilman. Orr said that gun policy is beyond a city council’s scope, reported the Yellow Sheet. “In my mind, I think there’s a difference between an advocate and a lawmaker. He should say whatever he wants, and I respect his opinion, but as a lawmaker, as a policy maker, I don’t think the Tucson City Council should be making those policies.”
Orr compared the “city council taking up gun regulations to the Legislature wading into foreign affairs,” and told the Yellow Sheet that if each city and county adopted their own regulations on gun possession, it could put gun owners in violation of state law, depending on where they travel in the state.
Orr called the proposal for person-to-person background checks a “slippery slope” and said limiting “person-to-person gun sales won’t make people safer.”
There is an express statute that prevents the City from regulating the transfer of firearms at the TCC that was passed after they attempted a similar ban in 2002 against the McMann Gun Show.
“Notwithstanding any other law, this paragraph does not authorize a political subdivision to regulate the sale or transfer of firearms on property it owns, leases, operates or controls in a manner that is different than or inconsistent with state law. For the purposes of this paragraph, a use permit or other contract that provides for the use of property owned, leased, operated or controlled by a political subdivision shall not be considered a sale, conveyance or disposition of property.”
While the City of Tucson continually fights with the state, Tucson is the 6th poorest metropolitan area in the country.
Jeff Hill, the Treasurer of the reconstituted Rio Nuevo Board, which owns the Tucson Convention Center, recalls that in his 12 years in the Arizona Senate, he and his colleagues were called upon numerous times to pre-empt equally anti-taxpayer efforts by the Tucson City Council, “Pre-emption may have been a dirty word to the city, but if it were not for the Legislature, the taxpayers of Tucson would have been the worst for it, and this stupid effort by Kozachik to stop more economic dollars coming to Tucson is de ja vu all over again.”
As a mental health professional, Orr has asked for policies that would focus on the identification of mental illness and funding school resource officers. He told the Yellow Sheet that people who understand their mental illness and are getting treatment are usually not a threat to society. “The key, to me, is treatment. After nine years in the [mental health] field, the only time I’ve ever said this could be a dangerous situation is when I’m dealing with someone who is undiagnosed or isn’t receiving treatment.”
One Tucsonan said of Kozachik’s latest series of stunts, “Speaking of mental illness, Steve claimed that he had been threatened for holding a partisan “roast” in early January, and used the supposed threats to limit free speech and impose all kinds of ssecurity measures. Gun Owners of America filed a public records request to see what the threats were. It turns out there weren’t any. I am not sure, but I think paranoia is listed in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).
Jared Loughner; the Tucson shooter, and the shooters in Aurora, Colorado and Sandy Hook all suffered from mental illness.