It’s not often we hear good gun news coming from government. Encouragingly, in its “Policing Matters” column, PoliceOne.com is reporting positive changes to the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act (LEOSA) signed by President Bush in 2004.
Currently, LEOSA recognizes that the threat to cops from criminals and the need to protect innocent people doesn’t end at the city, county, or state limits, or after a cop retires.
I am LEOSA-qualified. As a retired law enforcement officer, as long as I pass an annual firearms qualification course, I can carry a concealed handgun in any American state or territory, with certain restrictions. This reform would lessen those restrictions.
The reforms would broaden where active and retired officers can carry a concealed handgun. For example, in those absurd school “Gun-free Zones.” The act would also reform some unnecessarily burdensome tasks currently required of LEOSA-qualified concealed firearms carriers.
Finally, if the reform act is adopted, state-specific barriers to LEOSA-qualified active officers and retirees in places like New Jersey and New York would be eliminated.
You may recall an article I wrote last December, which detailed a New Jersey law that effectively criminalized active police officers who took their guns home after shift. This “barrier” even applied to cops who were required to drive their department cars to and from work. Yeah, not a whole lot of long-range thinking there.
You can listen to a podcast discussion of this issue by Jim Dudley and Doug Wyllie, authors of the “Policing Matters” column at PoliceOne.com. Dudley is a retired San Francisco deputy police chief and Doug Wyllie is a PoliceOne Senior Contributor.
