A Case of Self-Defense at City Hall

An employee of the city of Lawrence, Kansas shot an intruder at City Hall on Monday morning, in what police are calling an act of self-defense. Lawrence Police Chief Rick Lockhart said the intruder managed to gain entry through a back door, then made their way up a stairwell to the fourth floor, where they broke a glass window in the stairwell door before they were confronted by two employees. 

According to authorities, a fight ensued between the intruder and the employee before shots were fired. Lockhart said that the employee was “trained and authorized” to carry a gun at City Hall, but under Kansas law both visitors and employees in most municipal buildings can lawfully carry under the state’s Constitutional Carry statute, so long as they can legally possess a firearm. 

Lockhart said the intruder, identified only as a 28-year-old man from out of state, had no history with Lawrence police.

“It’s somebody who’s unfamiliar to the police,” Lockhart said. “So, that’s part of our investigation is to try and backtrack, when the person arrived here, why they were here, what was going on.”

City Manager Craig Owens called the incident “disturbing” but said no city employees were hurt. The fourth floor is home to the offices of the city manager, city attorney and budget manager.

“I don’t know that that was necessarily a target or that this person would have known that,” Lockhart said. “But it’s just it’s the top floor, so it could be that the person was in the stairwell and just happened to get there and come out.”

In the wake of the Bruen decision, several blue states declared virtually all government buildings to be “gun-free zones” off-limits to lawful carry, and this incident is a perfect example of why that’s such a bad idea. 

Even though Kansas statute broadly allows public employees to carry concealed while on the clock, the city of Lawrence has imposed some conditions on the practice. The city’s policy states, in part, that “any liability associated with the employee’s decision to carry a concealed handgun will be of a personal nature and will not be defended by the City since the carrying of a concealed handgun is outside the scope of City employment and not part of the employee’s duties.” 

Defending City Hall might not be part of an employee’s duties either, but when physically attacked by an intruder trying to gain access to a secure area, that employee has the right to defend themselves. 

We may never know the intent of this particular intruder since he’s now deceased, but we do know that put olicies depriving employees from protecting themselves on the job don’t stop individuals with evil intent from carrying out their plans. The city of Virginia Beach had a policy in place prohibiting city employees from carrying in municipal buildings, but a disgruntled employee ignored that edict in 2019 and killed 12 people inside a bulding in the city’s Municipal Center. 

Afterwards, several city employees said they would have been carrying if not for that policy, and the shooting could have had a very different outcome had there been another armed employee present to defend themselves and their co-workers. 

If a building has secure entrances, magnetometers, and armed guards to ensure that nobody’s illicitly bringing a weapon inside, I think it could reasonably be described as a “sensitive place.” All too often, though, government buildings are sensitive in name only. In those cases, legal gun owners should be able to lawfully bear arms in defense of themselves and others, just as the employee at Lawrence City Hall did on Monday morning. 

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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