A new bill, HB5847, introduced in Lansing last week would repeal a law from the 1930’s restricting ownership of attack or defense trailers.
State officials said a defense or attack trailer is any vehicle that can protect against or contains things like explosives, firearms or missiles and that’s capable of being drawn by another vehicle.
Matthew Williams is the legislation liaison for the Michigan State Police. He said in reality, under current weapons laws many attack trailer concepts would likely still be illegal.
“If you look at each of the things that could be added to the vehicle, for example, explosives since nine eleven have been highly regulated by the federal government. Then looking at missiles -- again heavily regulated. Then firearms, under state law you can’t mount a firearm to your vehicle”.
Williams said a defense trailer would probably be allowable if the bill passes.
“I’m looking more at like the defense trailer. I mean you could have an armored trailer and I’m sure you could armor that up pretty heavily. I guess I’m just not sure how that would be necessarily harmful”.
Republican State Representative Steven Johnson is the bill sponsor. He said he expects it to pass both the house and senate before the end of the year.