Cheap airplane tickets bring passengers into Salt Lake City and cheap vacation packages bring in many tourists annually to the region. Currently Utah hotel owners may legally deny renting a room to a gun owner who visibly carries a gun into a hotel. Under a pending bill in the state legislature hotel owners would be prohibited from refusing to rent a room to someone just because that person is carrying a firearm.
Members of the Utah Shooting Sports Council claim that when carrying hunting rifles they have been turned away when attempting to rent hotel rooms. The new legislation would amend the existing Innkeepers Rights Act which spells out when a hotel owner may refuse to rent someone a room.
Existing Utah law allows hotel owners to deny a potential guest a room who is unwilling or unable to pay for accommodations, visibly intoxicated, or carrying property that may be dangerous to other persons such as firearms or explosives. The proposed legislation would amend this law to exclude the word firearms.
The new bill has been approved by the states Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee and will go to the House for consideration. The only committee member to vote against the bill said he viewed it as an erosion of (hotel owners) property rights. Similar bills have been voted down twice before.
The bills sponsor claims that when guests rent a hotel room they have certain rights when occupying the space including the right to keep and bear arms.
Ultimately the bills fate will probably rest with whose rights the legislature more highly values - hotel owners or gun owners.
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