More than 300 people packed city council chambers in Missoula, Mt., on Oct. 19, 2015, for the first hearing on an ordinance that would require background checks on most gun sales and transfers. Speakers snaked 30 yards down the hallway, weaving between audience members who stood four and five abreast.

The lead sponsor of the ordinance, first-term City Council Member Bryan von Lossberg, sat with his hands calmly folded at a long table with other members of the 12-person council. His body language betrayed no anxiety, but appearances can be deceiving. He had received a threatening anonymous voicemail prior to the meeting, and had asked the chief of police to staff the proceedings with an undercover officer.

“This is the most emotionally wracking, stressful experience I’ve ever had on the City Council,” he told In These Times after the four-hour hearing. “I look across the breakfast table at my wife and 3-year-old and ask, ‘Why am I touching this?’ ”

Von Lossberg’s trepidation is understandable in a Western state where nearly 53 percent of residents—the sixth highest rate in the nation—own guns, according to a 2015 study. Montana, along with seven other Western states, received a failing grade this year from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, an advocacy group that evaluates state and federal gun-safety policy.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18883/gun-control-on-the-frontier