County gun boards hold their final meeting

MARQUETTE — The Marquette County Gun Board held their final meeting today.

A state law effective on December 1st will eliminate county gun boards in the state of Michigan. The Marquette County Gun Board held their last meeting Monday morning to finalize their work before they pass it on to the new 13–person unit at the Michigan State Police – Lansing Post. Citizens that have or will apply for a concealed pistol license or renewal shouldn’t expect any changes.

“You’re going to still do the same thing you did before,” said Marquette County Sheriff’s Department Undersheriff Michael Klein, “you’re going to apply for your concealed weapons permit through the county clerk. The only thing that’s really changed is the county gun board is going away, it’s been disbanded.”

“There’s going to be a unit of personnel dedicated to that task in Lansing,” said Post Commander for Michigan State Police – Negaunee Post F/Lt. Clint Michelin, “and it will likely help with efficiency and standardization of how this process goes state–wide. The end–user, meaning the applicants throughout the state of Michigan is probably going to be happy with the end result.”

During the final county gun board meeting, Board Chairman Kenmore Goldsworthy was honored for his service since 2001. Although it is not a common practice to have a member of the community as a board member, the rest of the board was exceptionally grateful for his contributions.

“It’s a very good thing,” added Michelin, “in that you have someone from the community that can help represent the residents throughout the area and bring that perspective and have that education related to concealed pistol licensing and how the gun board works. He’s been a very valuable asset to this board.”

“When you have somebody come in like Ken, a citizen at large, he donates his time,” Klein continued, “this is not something that he gets paid to do. He’ll come in once a month and meet with us, so over the last 15 years once a month is a tremendous amount of time. They do this as a donation to the citizens of Marquette County.”

Goldsworthy said that he considered it time well spent and that he was grateful for the opportunity.

“There were a lot of complaints before about getting a concealed carries,” said Marquette County Gun Board Chairman Kenmore Goldsworthy, “and I wanted to see that it was done fairly and it has been. It’s been really eye–opening with our county.”