According to Firearm Chronicles
Despite holding majorities in the Utah and Georgia legislature, pro-2A lawmakers haven’t been able to get any piece of good gun legislation across the finish line in either state this year. Utah’s legislative session just wrapped up, and while no pro-gun bills made it to the governor’s desk, gun owners were able to defeat a couple of bad bills.
House Minority Leader Brian King, D-Salt Lake City, presented once again this year a bill to enact universal background checks on gun sales in Utah. It met the same fate again this session: defeat. As did Layton Republican Rep. Steve Handy’s bill, which amounted to a third try at a red-flag law. It would have allowed a family member or law enforcement to request a court remove a firearm(s) from someone who is a danger to themselves or others.
On the bill’s repeated failure, Handy said: “At this point, they’re [House Republicans] getting a lot of pushback from gun rights folks and that makes them nervous.” Both universal background checks and red-flag legislation are huge priorities for the gun control movement at the moment, and even in states where Republicans control the statehouse, like Florida, we’ve seen red flag bills become law. It’s no small thing for Utah gun owners to have beaten back these bills, even if they weren’t successful in advancing any bills to protect their right to keep and bear arms.