Malls with 30.06 sign

HankB · Post by **HankB** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 9:41 pm

It's up to the venue's management to provide notice, which may include conspicuous posting of a PC30.06 compliant sign.

If the sign is not visible from the entrance you use, it has not been conspicuously posted.

Ergo, notice has NOT been given.

It is not by any stretch of the imagination YOUR responsibility to evaluate the mall's policies by a survey of ALL entrances.

srothstein · Post by **srothstein** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 9:51 pm

I think some of you are confusing common sense and fairness with the law. My point was that the law does not require every entrance to be posted and you could still be prosecuted by it.

Consider the case at Steve's Imaginary Mall as one example. There are proper signs clearly posted at every public entrance from the lot to the mall. But some of the stores have their own entrances from the lot. Sears, in an effort to help me develop the mall built their own store and it is Sears' property for the first 25 years (a typical mall agreement for anchors BTW). Sears allows CHLs to carry in their store. I have no legal authority to force them to ban. But they have an entrance into the mall from their store also.

If this is your first time ever at the mall, and you come through the Sears store, is it reasonable for me to say you have received notice? NO. But have I met the legal requirements of the law to enforce 30.06? YES. The law says notice posted at the entrance and does not specify at any entrance. But lets say I am a reasonable person and give you a warning this time and have you leave.

But the other guy I stop has been at the store about once every week for the past year. He has come in through the mall entrances and knows I ban guns. He also knows that Sears allows guns, so he has started coming in through the Sears entrance. Lets say I catch him. Can I prosecute him? Certainly, and I think you will all agree he has received adequate notice.

My point is that the law does not require you to see the sign or for every entrance to be covered. If I can prosecute the second guy, I could also prosecute the first. He might stand a better chance with the jury than the second guy would, but both prosecutions are legal.

HankB · Post by **HankB** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 7:51 pm

A sign is not "conspicuously posted" if it is invisible from the entrance you use, and that entrance is one that is normally used by shoppers; depending on the mall, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the majority of shoppers actually entered through one of the "anchor" tenants rather than the general mall entrance.

Yes, a malicious, incompetent, activist, or politically motivated DA can pursue prosecution for anything. (Think of Mike Nifong.)

Now, IANAL, but I believe a DA would have his work cut out to convince a jury that a sign that demonstrably COULD NOT BE SEEN from the entrance you used constituted notice being given to you.

It would be like getting a ticket for running a stop sign at an intersection where NO stop sign was posted, on the theory that "Other intersections have stop signs, so you should've known we wanted you to stop here, too."

PC30.06 in its current form has been on the books for a number of years now - if anyone is aware of an attempted prosecution for a PC30.06 violation involving entrance to any otherwise-legal venue (no school, bar, court, etc.) through an unposted entrance, please cite the case . . . or a newspaper report . . . or even an anecdote of what your cousin Vinny heard from a guy on his bowling team whose brother dated the DA's sister-in-law . . .