From the Associated Press:

W.Va. House Backs Employee Guns in Locked Cars

The article explains:

West Virginia's House has voted 85-14 to let employees bring loaded guns to their workplaces as long as they are locked in their cars.

The bill, titled the "Business Liability Protection Act," now goes to the Senate.

Supporters say it would expand Second Amendment rights.

Critics say it makes workplaces more dangerous and West Virginia less attractive to companies that want to control their premises.

(Note -- there was nothing about this bill in this morning's Wheeling Intelligencer. Instead we got a front page AP story telling us that national GOP leaders were moving slowly on tighter gun laws and their standard editorial on enforcing existing gun laws.)

Phil Kabler in this morning's Charleston Gazette-Mail elaborates on the bill's passage:

The House on Monday rejected proposed amendments to provide exceptions for chemical plants, and for churches and other places of worship.

[House Judiciary Chairman John] Shott said the NRA did not object to the other states putting exceptions into their laws. “I don’t know why they want us to be the poster child for whatever you want, you get,” he said.

Kabler also noted an exchange between delegates Fleischauer and Marshall Wilson:

Delegate Barbara Fleischauer, D-Monongalia, argued that the House was being tone-deaf to pass the bill less than two weeks after 17 people were murdered in a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida. . . .

Wilson, meanwhile, objected to Fleischauer’s description of the AR-15 rifle used in the Parkland high school massacre as a weapon of war.

“The AR-15, the civilian version, is not a weapon of war,” said Wilson, who said he owns several AR-15s. “That is a complete malapropism.”

Note to Delegate Wilson: you may want to look up the definition of "malapropism."