At the Anchorage Assembly meeting on Tuesday, the Assembly will consider a proposed ordinance that would expand liability to parents, foster parents, and guardians of minors who bring deadly weapons to school grounds or to school functions. The law might even be applied to babysitters or friends who are taking care of a child while parents are out of town.
The ordinance is being offered by Assemblywoman Karen Bronga, who seeks to amend Anchorage Municipal Code Section 8.25.060
- According to the proposed ordinance, in 2023 5.6% of Alaska students and 3.5% of Anchorage students reported having carried a weapon to school on at least one day in the 30 previous 15 days.
The ordinance explains that any deadly weapon that a child has on school grounds will lead to the prosecution of the parent or guardian, if the parent or guardian had the weapon in their possession originally and didn’t secure it or store it properly, but stored the weapon “in a criminally negligent manner.”
This could apply to an elderly grandparent who is raising children due to some type of family dysfunction or tragedy. A knife taken from a kitchen drawer or a nail gun taken from the garage of that grandparent could qualify, and the grandparent or guardian could be charged as though he or she had brought the knife on campus.
The same could hold true for a boxcutter, hatchet, or other item that could be seen as a deadly weapon.
The ordinance raises constitutional and legal questions.
The Alaska Constitution says, “The individual right to keep and bear arms shall not be denied or infringed by the state or political subdivision of the State.” The Bronga ordinance appears to violate the Constitution by infringing on constitutional rights.
There is also state law that says no political subdivision can have a more restrictive law on firearms than the state itself has in law.
AS 29.35.145 Regulation of firearms and knives says “The authority to regulate firearms and knives is reserved to the state, and, except as specifically provided by statute, a municipality may not enact or enforce an ordinance regulating the possession, ownership, sale, transfer, use, carrying, transportation, licensing, taxation, or registration of firearms or knives, unless explicitly allowed by state law.”
There are very few exceptions to this state statute. Municipalities can enact ordinances that are identical to state law and carry the same penalties as those established by the state, but cannot make the local ordinances more restrictive. Ordinances cannot infringe upon the right to bear arms as guaranteed by the Alaska Constitution.
It’s unclear how Bronga was able to get the Assembly’s legal staff to sign off on an unconstitutional provision that would most certainly draw a legal challenge.
Paying youth members
The Assembly also will vote on making the youth members on the Assembly into paid positions.
Chairman Chris Constant offered the resolution that will pay youth representatives $2,000 each. There are three youth representatives, for a total of $6,000 to be expended.
Youth voter registration drive
The youth members on the Assembly will also ask the Assembly to request that the Anchorage School District hold a voter registration drive to encourage participation in regular municipal elections, which occur in early April. Voter registration drives are uncommon in Alaska since more than 116% of the population is already registered to vote, due to things like automatic registration with Permanent Fund dividend applications and drivers license applications. The effort to register more youth may be seen as yet another distraction from the school district’s core mission of teaching, which it is failing at, by every measure.
The Anchorage Assembly meets on the ground floor of the Loussac Library on 36th Ave., with the meeting starting at 5 p.m. and lasting typically until about 11 p.m.
There needs to be checks and balances somehow in this because kids will do what kids will do regardless of what parents or adults say.
Unless the gun is in a lock box or gun, safe kid gets his hand on it without adult approval.
Yes, we need to keep guns out of troubled kids hands, and maybe some kind of leverage against the adult in certain instances is right but not across the board.
This is a tough one
I guess maybe I’m not supposed to say this out loud, but did you ever know a kid who couldn’t figure out how to open a lock box?
IC- frankly, if one is not smart enough to figure out how to secure a gun, and keep that gun away from a child, then one should not own a gun.
Teaching your child not to take a weapon to school seems like a reasonable expectation, or is that just too much to ask from an adult these days?
What Hellish reasoning was used to establish this proposal? All this will do is encourage fewer guardianships and more unsupervised, and homeless children. Again, it is always about trading success for failure with the Assembly. Success is always punished, by whatever ghoulish proposal the loons within the Assembly conjure up in their smoke-filled hotel rooms. It appears to me these Assembly members hate success and want to punish success. What happened to these poor souls that they want to inflict their anger and resentment back on others? Please, Anchorage! Wake up and rid yourselves of these angry and bitter people.
Why don’t we just declare all parents and guardians anathema, and let the Assembly raise them all? (SARC)
And we should also extend the penalties and sin of the gun-toting child unto the seventh generation!
The Marxist Nine are completely off their rockers.
But we already knew that years ago, with their whole extreme Covidian overreaction and authoritarianism, if not well before.
Radical leftist extremists are fundamentally insane.
Sigh! There was a day in my youth, we carried our deer hunting rifle in a rack behind the seat of our trucks for that “Moment”. Yep, but meat was meat. We’d leave them unlocked while in school (Actually everywhere as most of time locks didn’t work!)
Nobody wondered, cared, or objected, knowing we were responsible as we were all introduced to family values at early ages and recognized responsibility, obligations, and trust.
This article reflects the vast changes in those values, to denial that the case will fall on scoffing listeners. cheers, Johnson-Ketchikan (86 years young)
I remember those days. – sd
I still live those days. I also keep an untethered trained blue heeler in my truck which works wonders as a deterrent against any would-be pilferers…. no locks necessary!
I’m getting so confused.
If a minor brings a weapon to school, and the parents are in the country illegally will they be charged? Will the school then offer on premises criminal processing to harbor them, from ICE opportunities to arrest and depot?
My2cents, I think you have the perfect recipe here for making a radical leftist extremist’s head explode! Please let me know when you decide to try it out — I definitely want to be a spectator!
Don’t let ASD educate your kids. Problem solved.
If only we could extend protections from these particular ‘elected’ inanimate objects, to the citizens.
Can we extend criminal liability to the police chief and mayor when a police officer commits a crime?
AS we KNOW “our” beloved Assembly always seems to find a way to go around the law.
Contact the assembly here: ‘https://www.muni.org/Departments/Assembly/Pages/About%20Us%20-%20Member%20Profiles.aspx
There’s absolutely no personal responsibility anymore. Until there are extreme consequences for crimes our society will continue to deteriorate. From theft in stores to deadly crime. Unbelievable to me that stores have to lock items up. The consequence for theft should be miserable for the thief but our liberal legal system does the slap on the hand. Whoe is me. It’s complete bull shit. Need to re haul our entire legal establishment.
Can we stop this in anyway?
Firstly, declare the Anchorage Assembly a liability, severely inept, fundamentally ‘crackers’.
ps well said al.
But they are silent on the Superintendent brags he will not allow Federal agents on campus to do their jobs. They say nothing about their employee promises to violate FEDERAL Law. This assembly is causing the down fall of Anchorage like all other cities controlled by these leftist fools.
There are already laws that make parents responsible for the actions of their children and guns not being locked up.
Can the parents sue for indoctrination of their kids to become influenced to homosexuality?
A “solution” desperately searching for a problem.
Just enforce the laws that exist. That would make a nice change of pace.
Better idea:
Metal detectors installed at main entrance to every school. Armed security officer at every school. Teachers with armed training, and carrying, at every school. Criminal liability to school board and assembly for not implementing and funding these things.
alaska has a statute regarding parental responsibility regarding school damage. AK Stat § 09.65.255 (2022)
If Anchorage cannot legally do this the state should expand the statute to include any illegal activity. It is illegal to bring a gun to school. This is just common sense. Guns in schools have done way more damage both financially and socially than spray painting swing sets.
Extend it to the assembly members as well. Hell any crimes in the municipality of Anchorage, the assembly should share liability.
Having achieved the perfect utopia in Los Anchorage, the Marxist Nine go afield to find further (imaginary) dragons to slay.
Old enough for “gender affirmation care”, old enough to carry.
Why in the hell would anyone be a foster parent in this day and age? Discipline is criminalized, criminal behavior is now YOUR responsibility!
Our state has gone mad.
Another lame brain idea..
The same fools that don’t want parents involved with a child’s medical castration choices DO want the same parents responsible for a child’s behaviors that they CAN’T control?!? Got it..Waaaaay past time to get rid of the juveniles on the Assembly and replace them with clearer thinking adults…🤦♂️
I affirm the right to keep and bear arms. However, I don’t see the constitutional issue you offer Suzanne. Owning firearms comes with serious obligations and responsibilities. My not letting some punk kid get his hand on my weapons is my job. Those parents of school shooters that now sit in prison got exactly what they deserved. They are getting the punishment they deserve, and hopefully their incarceration acts as a deterrent to other reckless and irresponsible “parents”.