I sent mssa an email and heard back from Gary Marbut himself. My text is in red.
Been following this with a great deal of interest and got excited on Monday with Gary Marbut’s post on a hunting website Monday that the bill had passed the Second Reading of the Senate. I looked at the Legislature’s site and found nothing and it doesn’t show as even having been on the agenda Monday through today.
Did Gary jump the gun a little? What’s the status?
Matthew,
The conference committee report on HB 271 passed the House on Second and Third Reading, but is still awaiting action by the Senate. We were told that the Senate would bring HB 271 up on Monday, but that didn't happen and it keeps getting put off by Senate leadership, for reasons unknown to us. We are very near the end of our 90-day session so we sure hope the Senate acts on HB 271 soon. Stay tuned.
BTW, a permit has not been required for two decades to carry concealed in 99.4% of Montana (outside of city limits) or to carry openly anywhere in Montana. Our HB 271 would make the remaining 6/10ths of 1% like the rest has been since 1991. Under HB 271, the only qualification for carrying concealed inside city limits would be that the person is eligible to legally possess a handgun under state or federal law.
A couple questions I’ve been getting conflicting word on, does the bill your Senate will be looking at still have the “carry of training card” requirement? Does it still allow muni’s to “opt-out”? Obviously neither are preferable but if it gets it passed, as I’m fond of pointing out to all-or-nothing-ists on “our side”, it can be cleaned up later when it isn’t so high profile.
The conference committee stripped the training and training credential feature out of HB 271. The only criteria now is eligibility to possess a handgun. There never was and is not now any provision in HB 271 allowing local communities to opt out.
BTW, we don't call this "constitutional carry" in Montana, but "permitless carry" because the RKBA provision in the Montana Constitution specifically excludes concealed carry from the constitutional RKBA protection. It's a cultural thing from 1884 when the current RKBA language was formulated for the territorial constitution. Back then they felt that if you were a manly man you wore your gun outside your clothes where everyone could see it. Otherwise you were a wimp, sneak and neer-do-well.
