After being debated for several weeks, public testimony was heard by the Kenai Borough Assembly regarding Ordinance 2020-29 which aimed to designate the borough as a Second Amendment Sanctuary. The ordinance was ultimately approved on a 5 – 4 vote, but not before an amendment made changes to its language, making the borough’s sanctuary status protect the Second Amendment “in the manner as to the extent described in this ordinance.” That dictates that the borough will not go beyond established law to offer guarantees of the right to bear arms.
All but one of the public testimonies voiced opposition to the original ordinance. Some merely opposed the ordinance as-written, pointing out that both the U.S. and Alaska constitutions each already guarantee protections of the Second Amendment. Others voiced more stringent opposition to spending so much time on an ordinance dedicated to bolstering firearms. Carrie Henson of Kalifornsky: “We legislate the hell out of cars, controlled substances, and the like. We even make access to voting more difficult than access to the one instrument created for the sole purpose to kill. It’s as easy as walking into a Walmart and showing an I.D. It’s stupid.”
President Kelly Cooper proposed changing the ordinance’s original language. Her change was approved. The changes added a clause encouraging firearm safety training, recognized that the borough itself has little authority over firearms as it does not have its own law enforcement agency, and noted that the borough has no criminal law enforcement powers to enforce the Second Amendment beyond what is already guaranteed in the U.S. and state constitutions.
She explained: “I just think that it’s important that we, and responsible for us, to clarify what our authority is. Yes, we do support the Second Amendment. No, we do not have that authority. We need to make sure that our people in our communities understand that so we do not have misuse or misrepresentation of language that we pass.”
Co-sponsor of the original ordinance, Jesse Bjorkman, addressed why the original language would have been important for the borough: “A choice that we can make as a borough is we can choose to have, as one of our principles, that we are going to defend the Second Amendment. We’re going to defend the private person’s right to keep and bear arms. We don’t have to have a law enforcement agency to do that. That can still be a principle that we have without having a law enforcement agency. That’s a principle that we hold and I think that the text as-written here can still be that way.”