PHOENIX β The president of the state Senate is quashing legislation that would have made it harder to prosecute people for firing guns within city limits.
Steve Yarbrough told Capitol Media Services on Monday he does not accept claims by proponents of HB 2287 that existing law results in people being arrested for legitimate accidents with their firearms. The Chandler Republican said he believes that prosecutors would use their discretion before charging someone with a felony.
Conversely, Yarbrough said he does not want to do anything to undermine the ability to go after violators of βShannonβs Law,β the 2000 legislation that was designed to deter people from firing their guns into the air.
βIβve just studied this on my own,β said Yarbrough, who is an attorney. βI think its unnecessary.β
Yarbrough gets to exercise a one-person veto because he chairs the Senate Rules Committee through which all bills must pass before going to the floor. And since he wonβt hear the bill, it is dead for this year.
Rep. Tony Rivero, R-Peoria, who shepherded the legislation through the House and through the Senate Government Committee, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
But Dave Kopp, lobbyist for the Arizona Citizens Defense League, said Yarbrough is off base with his claim that no one is ever prosecuted for true accidents.
He cited an incident where a man was charged after bringing a newly purchased gun back to his apartment. Kopp said the gun went off when the man was trying to remove a round stuck in the chamber.
βIt was a stupid thing to do,β Kopp said. But he said it should not have resulted in criminal charges.
Yarbrough, however, said he sees the legislation from the perspective of weakening the 2000 law named after 14-year-old Shannon Smith, a Phoenix teen who died in 1999 when she was hit by a bullet that had been fired in the air from some distance away. No one was ever arrested.
It makes it a felony to act with βcriminal negligenceβ to discharge a firearm within the limits of any city. That is defined as someone acting in a way that fails to perceive the risk of a situation that a reasonable person would see.
Rivero sought to bar anyone being charged unless prosecutors could show that the firing of the weapon was intentional, knowing or reckless, a more difficult thing to prove. He said that would ensure that a true accident does not result in felony charges.
Yarbrough is not going to block HB 2022, a separate measure that would create a different exception to Shannonβs Law allowing people to fire off ammunition with what has been called βrat shotβ or βsnake shotβ within city limits.
