From a South Carolina Legal professional Basic July 9 opinion:
We obtained your letter requesting an Legal professional Basic’s opinion relating to whether or not part 16-23-420 of the South Carolina Code prohibits an individual from carrying a firearm in a publicly owned car parking zone or publicly owned parking storage….
Part 16-23-420 offers in related half:
… It’s illegal for an individual to own a firearm of any type on any premises or property owned, operated, or managed by a personal or public college, school, college, technical school, different post-secondary establishment, or in any publicly owned constructing, with out the categorical permission of the authorities in command of the premises or property. The provisions of this subsection associated to any premises or property owned, operated, or managed by a personal or public college, school, college, technical school, or different post-secondary establishment, don’t apply to when the firearm stays inside an attended or locked motorized vehicle and is secured in a closed glove compartment, closed console, closed trunk, or in a closed container secured by an integral fastener and transported within the baggage compartment of the car…..
The opinion concluded (counting on a previous opinion that) “any premises or property owned, operated, or managed by” modifies solely “college, school, …,” and never “publicly owned constructing”; due to that, the statute would not restrict firearm possession in non-school/school buildings’ “surrounding premises.” It then went on to conclude that parking garages should not depend as “constructing[s]” for functions of the statute:
Black’s Regulation Dictionary defines a constructing as “[a] construction with partitions and a roof, esp. a everlasting construction.” We consider it’s plain a car parking zone wouldn’t be thought-about a constructing in accordance with its typical and customary that means….
As as to whether a parking storage qualifies as a constructing as utilized in part 16-23-420(A), we consider it is a nearer query. Black’s Regulation Dictionary doesn’t outline the time period “parking storage”; nonetheless, Merriam-Webster English Dictionary defines a parking storage as “a constructing during which folks normally pay to park their automobiles, vehicles, and so on.” Regardless of this definition’s use of the phrase constructing, we however consider a court docket would seemingly discover a parking storage wouldn’t be thought-about a constructing below this statute as a result of to carry in any other case would result in a end result clearly unintended by the Basic Meeting.
Like a car parking zone, a parking storage’s major goal is to offer parking for autos. To interpret the plain language of the statute as encompassing parking garages within the time period constructing whereas excluding parking heaps would lead to an inconsistent utility of the firearm prohibition in publicly owned buildings.
Furthermore, part 16-23-20(D) of the South Carolina Code expressly grants an individual legally possessing a firearm to retailer it wherever in a car, whether or not occupied or unoccupied. Construing this statute along with the firearm prohibition in publicly owned buildings, we consider a court docket would maintain these two statutes could be learn harmoniously by discovering the time period constructing doesn’t embody parking garages. Primarily based on the foregoing, we consider a court docket would seemingly discover the prohibition of firearms in publicly owned buildings below part 16-23-420(A) doesn’t embody publicly owned parking garages….