by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

Kansas gun rights leaders, including Republican State Sen. Phil Journey, had fully expected Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to veto concealed carry legislation, even though public calls for her to sign outnumbered calls for her to veto the bill by a 3-to-1 margin.

Prior to her veto, Sebelius acknowledged to the Kansas City Star that her office had been flooded with calls, mail and e-mail messages supporting the measure. Despite that, she rejected the bill.

Journey recalled to Gun Week that Sebelius, a Democrat, “had campaigned against right to carry for all Kansas citizens, and had consistently maintained a position of only allowing retired law enforcement officers to carry.”

However, Journey also pointed to reports that Sebelius’ office had received an estimated 1,000 messages in the days leading up to her veto, and those supporting concealed carry held an overwhelming majority.

Journey was particularly disappointed because he knew there would not be any attempt to override the governor’s veto.

He is miffed, however that Sebelius has apparently recruited a Democrat to run against him in this fall’s election. He has been one of the most ardent pro-gunners to grace the legislature in a long time, and once served on the National Rifle Association’s board of directors.

In her veto message, Sebelius insisted that she supports the Second Amendment, and the state constitutional provision recognizing the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. However, she backpedaled on that support by noting, “I do not believe allowing people to carry concealed handguns into sporting events, shopping malls, grocery stores, or the workplace would be good public policy. And, to me, the likelihood of exposing children to loaded handguns in their parents’ purses, pockets, and automobiles is simply unacceptable.”

She argued in her veto message that if the bill had been signed into law, “police officers, highway patrolmen, sheriffs, and deputies in Kansas would be forced to assume that any person they stop could have a firearm. This would make their already dangerous job even more difficult.”

Journey called that argument ludicrous, and suggested the governor was using it for cover to excuse her anti-gun veto. Likewise, Joe Waldron, executive director of the Citizen’s Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said the statement was ridiculous on its face, because law enforcement officers are trained to approach every car as if there were a firearm aboard. To think otherwise, he suggested, “is stupid.”

Sebelius had said she would support a bill that would allow concealed carry only by retired law enforcement officers, a position that brought a sharp rebuff from the editorial page of the Wichita Eagle. The newspaper bluntly called the governor’s position “sexist.”

This was the second veto of concealed carry in the Sunflower State. In 1997, former Gov. Bill Graves, a Republican, also nixed a bill that had been passed by the legislature. As a result, Kansas remains one of only four states without some provision for carrying firearms for personal protection.