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Thank you for your perspective, Norm... I didn't realize until now that you previously worked for the local paper. That explains some things.

Thank you also, Hildy, for pinging me to this.

I have mixed feelings about guns in courthouses. I'm willing to be educated and I'll follow this debate with interest. I think a far better case can be made for keeping guns out of courtrooms than for keeping guns out of the rest of the courthouse where people come to do routine county business. I'm very much aware of the problems of placing limits on the Second Amendment and would like to learn more about how this was handled in the 1800s and early 1900s before the gun ban epidemic broke out.

FWIW, our circuit judges have ordered the use of a metal detector and banned not only guns but knives over a certain length, taking it out of the hands of the county commissioners, and putting security under the authority of the court bailiffs rather than the sheriff's department. This was an issue in our county before I moved here with a former sheriff who was deliberately doing a full-body check of a county commissioner who he detested when the commissioner came to the county commission meetings to see if he might be carrying a concealed weapon in male personal spaces.

That fight is long since over — both the sheriff and the county commissioner have been out of office for nearly a decade — but we still have the security guards and metal detector in place under circuit court order.

Here’s a link to the original Daily Miner article on which this AP report was based. It has some additional details for those who may be interested.

http://www.kingmandailyminer.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubsectionID=1&ArticleID=54445

Looks like Freeper Hildy is doing some good work.