Festival's gun ban lifted Royal Oak yields to state law, OKs carrying in plain sight The Detroit News
Royal Oak -- Coming to Royal Oak this Labor Day weekend: The city's first Arts, Beats & Eats festival -- and the first one allowing open-carry guns.
Bowing to pressure to conform to state law, the City Commission on Monday night struck down a gun ban in the festival contract to allow holstered guns in plain sight at the event Sept. 3-6.
"The law is the law," said Mayor Jim Ellison. "I don't agree with it, but we have the right to change that law so those gray issues are gone," he added, referring to modifying laws that allow guns in public.
Not to be undone by open-carry advocates, city officials passed a resolution calling on state legislators to amend a law that allows gun carriers to enter local public buildings.
That didn't ruin the win for gun advocates Monday night.
"The fact that the city recognized the law and supported the hundreds of thousands of people who carry firearms every day is a huge victory," said Scott Webb, regional coordinator for Michigan Open Carry Inc.
The commission and open-carry proponents had locked heads for weeks over a clause in the Ford Arts, Beats & Eats festival contract that prohibited guns at the Labor Day mainstay.
Proponents say state law and the Second Amendment allow a person who is licensed to carry a firearm, holstered and in plain sight.
"It's been a complex issue," said Jon Witz, the festival's organizer, but he said he supported the commission's decision.
"We don't anticipate any incidents" at the festival, Witz said.
Some residents and festival supporters balked at the idea of guns at a family-friendly venue, one saying it "has turned the city into a circus."
Recent campaigns by gun owners have pushed the issue into the public forum. In March, advocates strapped guns in their holsters and headed to local Starbucks to test state laws. Blanching at being the center of the gun debate, the coffee chain said that it was sticking to its policy of letting customers carry guns where it's legal. Businesses can choose to ban guns from their premises.
Rick Ector, the owner and chief firearms instructor at Rick's Firearm Academy of Detroit, said the issue is grabbing headlines because more people are carrying guns once they learn they are allowed to.
"A lot of people think that it was never legal to carry a handgun out in the open," said the 42-year-old from Detroit. "But it's legal because it was never illegal, and now you're seeing a lot more people do it."
Forty-three states, including Michigan, allow open-carry practice.
Provisions ban people, except police officers and security personnel, from openly carrying firearms in banks, churches, courts, theaters, sports arenas, day care centers and hospitals.
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Winter is Coming Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
