The Arizona Senate has given preliminary approval to a bill allowing sawed-off shotguns and silencers for a pistol to be legal under state law.
The expansion of the state weapons law was contained in an amendment Sen. Kelli Ward tacked onto a bill that would have restored the rights of people with a felony conviction to, once again, own the weapons.
Ward did not comment on her amendment, but Democratic Sen. Steve Farley was not willing to let it go through without debate.
“This bill is now less about setting aside convictions and more about making sawed-off shotguns and silencers legal in Arizona, which seems to me a pretty big move to be doing as an amendment to a bill that otherwise, I think, I could find inoffensive,” Farley said.
Farley didn’t think the bill would be a hit with law enforcement, since the weapons legalized in the bill tend to be used against them. However, in the end his objections didn’t matter as Senators gave the bill their tentative approval.