‘Gun’ bill outlawing lookalike phone cases moving
Divided over proposed regulations for actual firearms, Minnesota lawmakers have rallied around a bill to outlaw smartphone cases made to look like pistols or revolvers.
Legislation making it a crime to buy, possess, manufacture or sell the gun-replica phone cases cleared its final committee Wednesday and now awaits action on the House and Senate floors. The phone cases drew bipartisan condemnation _ and no testimony in opposition _ during a House Commerce and Regulatory Reform Committee hearing.
"This is about the dumbest thing I've ever seen," DFL Rep. Joe Atkins, DFL-Inver Grove Heights said of the phone cases. "If it wasn't solely dumb it wouldn't be so scary. But it's also dangerous."
Atkins and others first raised their concerns last year and hoped retailers would voluntarily pull them from the shelves. But when some began filtering into the state through Internet sales, Atkins said a state ban became the necessary fallback.
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Maplewood Police Chief Paul Schnell described the cases as a recipe for disaster.
"This cell phone case creates an utterly no-win situation for us. No win in the win in the interest of community safety. No win in the reduction of fear we hope to achieve and have in our communities. These no-wins are the best case scenarios," Schnell said, speaking on behalf of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association. "The worst case scenarios is the potential loss of life when an officer finds him or herself in the position of having to make that split-second decision oftentimes under high-stress conditions as well as low-light conditions."
Rep. Bob Loonan, R-Shakopee, referred to a recently enacted state law allowing motorists to prove to police they are insured drivers by pulling up a policy card on a phone.
"That's just gas on this fire that you have an officer pulling someone over, they want to see the proof of insurance and someone just pulls that phone out real quick, this is a bad situation and we need to deal with this," Loonan said.
Under the bill, violations would be a petty misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $300.
The bill doesn't touch on a newer concern of law enforcement: Functioning fold-up guns made to look like smartphones.
"It's funny how our policies can't seem to keep up with the marketplace of bad ideas that seem to be coming out," said Rep. Laurie Halverson, DFL-Eagan. "It's very interesting that before we even get this bill passed we are heading into a whole new world of devices that are set up to make us less safe."