althor said:
What if you, (nobody in particular), were carrying a concealed firearm but didn't have a permit as it is not required. Would you inform the officer? If not, then why do so when you have a permit?
Here are some guiding principles I use to decide whether to disclose or not:
1-If required by law (and in Utah it isn't) to disclose, I'm going to disclose.
2-If not required by law and not likely to come to the officer's attention during the interaction, I generally won't disclose.
3-If not required by law, but the firearm is likely to come to the officer's attention during the interaction, I would prefer to disclose preemptively on my terms, than have the officer find the gun on his terms and me then have to react in some way.
If anyone cares to disagree strongly with these principles, I'd love to hear the rationale for it. Mind you, I'm not talking about what my exact rights are under the 4th and 5th amendments. I'm working from a presumption that I'm carrying legally and I simply want to minimize my personal risk while interacting with an armed agent of the state. Needlessly contributing to the nervousness of such an agent seems a bad plan to me in most cases.
So with that in mind, it is number 3 that is interesting in Utah if you have a Utah permit. The fact that you have a permit is going to come up on the officer's in-car-terminal when he runs your driver license. This doesn't tell him whether you are carrying that day, obviously. But he now knows you have a permit, but that you didn't bother to tell him you had a permit or were carrying. Why not?
So, under the principle that if an officer is likely to discover the gun (or permit to have a gun) on his own it is better to preemptively disclose than to have him find out on his own, in Utah, when I need to provide ID to an officer, I provide my Utah carry permit right along with my driver license.
althor said:
Having said that, if you were asked if you had a firearm in the car and you did, would you say yes? Can you be compelled to answer that question if you've done nothing wrong? Wouldn't that effectively be a search at that point?
I'm told that Utah officers are not supposed to routinely ask if you have a gun or other weapon in the car. Only if they have some specific reason (ie RAS) are they supposed to ask. I cannot provide any citation to that claim. Of course, once you provide a permit, it is fair game for them to ask and I answer honestly.
You can refuse to answer if you want to. It is a crime to lie to an officer conducting official business.
Bear in mind that under "Terry" officers have wide latitude to provide for their own safety. Generally, this would allow them to remove you from the car and to do a pat down of your person to verify you do not have weapons on you. Having removed you from the car and any weapons in the car, they should not search the car without either consent or probable cause. Of course, PC can be developed in any number of ways including letting a K-9 come alert on the car, smelling pot on your clothes or breath, seeing something that looks like contraband through the window, etc.
althor said:
As far as making an officer less nervous, shouldn't the officer just assume that everybody has a firearm in the car with them?
Yes he should. And probably does.
The question is, do you want to interact with an officer operating on the default assumption that every car he stops might be full of cop-killing, psychopathic gang-bangers? Or would you rather provide him some evidence that a different, more benign assumption about your character and risk to his well being is in order?
If he isn't likely to discover the gun on his own, probably no reason to bring it up and potentially complicate things. But if he is likely to discover it, preemptive disclosure sends a more positive message in most cases than does exercising our rights to remain silent on the matter, IMO.
Charles