Missouri state Representative-elect Nick Schroer (R-O’Fallon) will be offering a bill that would allow concealed carry license owners to sue governments or businesses if they are injured in an attack in a gun free zone. It’s his theory, and a good one I might add that a concealed carry permit holder would be forbidden to protect themselves, so that whoever declares a gun free zone should then be responsibility for the safety of those inside the zone , who can no longer defend themselves.
Governments and businesses would have to give it a lot of thought before declaring a gun free zone once this law would be enacted. In order to win such a suit, a concealed carrier would have to show that with his gun, he would not have been injured. That should be easy enough to do.
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.”