National Rifle Association carpetbaggers overpowered local gun-rights advocates to torpedo an improvement in Utah's concealed-gun law.

The Utah gun groups wanted to bar out-of-state instructors from issuing Utah concealed carry permits. About half of Utah's permits are issued to non-residents who get their training from a out-of-state instructor without ever setting foot in Utah.

The local gun-rights champions, who are also NRA members, feared that a rash of incidents of shoddy out-of-state training were devaluing the Utah permit, which is considered the "gold standard" of concealed-carry permits because it is accepted in nearly every state through reciprocity agreements. Clark Aposhian, chairman of the Utah Shooting Sports Council, says that some states are questioning the Utah permit because of poor oversight of out-of-state instructors.

But national NRA lobbyists refused to take a backward step on what has become the de facto national concealed-carry permit and headed to Utah's Capitol.

The NRA got Rep. Curt Oda alone and convinced him to gut his bill to allow out-of-state training to continue. The Utah gun activists thought the neutered bill was meaningless and apparently the House did too, because it was allowed to die on the last night of the session. The hamstrung training bill was part of an NRA winning streak at the Utah Lege. (Two other NRA-backed gun bills passed, even though a poll found about 60 percent of Utah voters oppose them.)

Aposhian says he remains concerned that other states might begin to cancel their reciprocity agreements with Utah if permit-training problems continue. If that doesn't happen—proving the NRA was correct, he says, "I'll be the first to say I was wrong."