Republican frontrunner Donald Trump says that he wants "to
read the fine print" of a petition calling for the open carry of firearms
at the Republican convention this July in Cleveland. Trump has described
himself as a proponent of Americans' Second-Amendment rights in the past but
says that he has not yet "seen the petition."
Data curated by InsideGov
People
who try to carry firearms into the Republican National Convention (RNC) will
not be allowed to pass through a checkpoint even if they have a ticket, a
Secret Service official said Monday.
The
Secret Service has the authority to prevent firearms from entering sites that
are visited by their protectees, including presidential candidates, spokesman
Rob Hoback said in a statement Monday in response to an online petition that calls for the allowance of
guns at the RNC in July.
"Individuals
determined to be carrying firearms will not be allowed past a predetermined
outer perimeter checkpoint, regardless of whether they possess a ticket to the
event," Hoback said.
Only
authorized law enforcement who coordinate with the Secret Service for an event,
he said, are allowed to carry a firearm inside of a protected site.
The
petition, which has garnered more than 43,000 signatures and features what
appears to be a photo of a semi-automatic rifle, on Change.org calls for the
allowance of guns at Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena at the convention in July.
It's possible the petition may be a satire; the person who spear-headed it has
a Twitter account whose feed mocks Republican presidential candidates and
follows Democrats or Democratic organizations.
While
Ohio has an open-carry law, the arena prohibits people from carrying firearms
inside.
"We
must take a stand," the petition says. "We cannot allow the national
nominating convention of the party of Lincoln and Reagan to be hijacked by
weakness and political correctness. The policies of the Quicken Loans Arena do
not supersede the rights given to us by our Creator in the U.S.
Constitution."
The
petition calls on Quicken Loans Arena to suspend its policy on guns for the RNC
from July 18 to 21 and for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, one of the presidential
candidates, to use his executive authority to override the "gun-free zone
loophole" at the venue. It also demands that the Republican National
Committee and its chairman Reince Priebus prepare a contingency plan for an
alternate location for the convention. More
