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Colorado Democrats abandon “assault weapons ban” legislation?

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Democrats in Denver may be taking a pass on the bill banning so-called assault weapons that was quietly introduced by Sen. Rhonda Shields and Rep. Elisabeth Epps on a Friday afternoon a few weeks ago. HB 1230 had been scheduled for a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee earlier this week, but it was removed from the committee’s calendar. On Thursday, a Democratic strategist told KDVR that the bill was being pulled from consideration after it failed to find support from the Democratic majority.

“Through sources, I’ve been told it just wasn’t going to pass. It didn’t have the support that we thought,” FOX31 political analyst and Democratic strategist Andy Boian said on “Colorado Point of View.”

“The end result was that it wasn’t going to pass, it wasn’t going to be effective, and so Democrats did go ahead and pull the bill,” Boian said.

However, a spokesperson with the Colorado House Democrats later said the hearing for the bill was postponed Wednesday because the committee’s agenda for that day was full.

Yeah, but it was already on the agenda. Why pull the gun ban bill and not one of other pieces of legislation that was under consideration? Denver Post reporter Seth Klamann says that was the choice of HB 1230 sponsor Elisabeth Epps.

Something tells that if the votes were there on the committee to pass the gun ban bill committee chair Rep. Mike Weissman would have made sure that HB 1230 had its hearing this week, even if Democrats wanted that committee to focus on abortion legislation. Less than two weeks ago Weismann sounded supportive of the bill when speaking to reporters, so it certainly wasn’t any personal opposition to a ban on his part that led to the bill being yanked from the committee’s agenda this week.

While Weissman acknowledged that “there’s no one bill that is going to do everything at once to keep innocent people from getting killed,” he said the types of weapons that would fall under the proposed assault weapons ban are specifically engineered to injure and kill people.

“We do see these weapons used, unfortunately, in a lot of mass shootings,” he said. “Just about any firearm can be lethal; the lethality of these kinds of weapons is quite high, though.”

Weissman had his talking points down, but it sounds like he and others have struggled to convince other Democrats that banning the most commonly-sold rifles in the country is a good idea; either politically or from a public safety perspective. Unfortunately, the apparent lack of support for a gun ban doesn’t mean that gun owners can breathe easy for the rest of the session. Democrats are expected to approve several other anti-gun bills, including a measure that would repeal the state’s prohibition on lawsuits that seek to blame the firearms industry for the actions of criminals, expansions to the state’s “red flag” law, and a bill that would raise the age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21.

None of those bills would be good news for gun owners, but it’s still somewhat surprising (and encouraging) that the “assault weapons ban” isn’t making much headway with Democrats this session, and Colorado isn’t the only state where we’ve seen this phenomenon this year either. Despite New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s repeated calls for a gun ban, which included threats to bring lawmakers back for a special session if they didn’t deliver a bill to her desk before the close of this year’s regular session, the only piece of gun control approved by the Democratic majority was a firearms storage measure.

Until HB 1230 is officially defeated Colorado gun owners should continue to keep up the pressure on their representatives and senators. Some of them may have seen the light on this issue, and it sounds like others are at least feeling the heat from their constituents, but as long as the bill can still be brought forward it remains a threat to the Second Amendment rights of Coloradans. As encouraging as these latest developments are, it’s still premature to celebrate HB 1230’s defeat.

Kansas moves to drop state fees for concealed carry licenses

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While many localities in California are trying to charge hundreds of dollars (and in some cases, more than $1,000) in order to obtain a concealed carry license, lawmakers in Kansas are poised to remove all of the state-imposed of the fees that come with applying for a license. On Wednesday, HB 2412 cleared the state House by wide margins and headed to the state Senate for consideration. The 91-33 House vote doesn’t guarantee Senate success, but it’s a very good sign for what would be a truly terrific law.

If signed into law, this bill would amend the Personal and Family Protection Act to get rid of fees paid by those who have applied for a concealed carry license (CCL) or who are seeking renewal of the license. No fees would be required from applicants except to cover the cost of taking fingerprints, according to a supplemental note on HB 2412.

Current law requires a total of $132.50 for CCL issuance fees. Of that, $100 goes to the state attorney general and the rest is payable to the sheriff of the county where the applicant lives. The $100 charge to the attorney general would be dropped if HB 2412 is signed into law by Governor Laura Kelly. The $32.50 in county costs would stay in place.

I’d love to see those county fees disappear as well, but the $32.50 the counties charge to run a background check is at least fairly reasonable. Heck, it’s less than the $50 I pay for my Virginia concealed carry license, and worlds away from the hundreds of dollars in fees that California cities like La Verne and Santa Monica are imposing on gun owners.

Kansas is already a Constitutional Carry state, but many gun owners may still want a concealed carry license for reciprocity purposes. HB 2412 would be a boon to them, but it would be a big help for gun owners in other states as well; serving as an ideal counter-argument to the high cost of carrying imposed in states like California, New York, and New Jersey.

It’s also great to see legislation from a freshman lawmaker getting such strong support, especially since the state representative who introduced the bill is a Second Amendment activist herself. Rep. Rebecca Schmoe has been a member of the D.C. Project for years, and sat down with Bearing Arms last year when she announced her candidacy for state representative to explain why she was running for office.

Schmoe’s  legislative district is 59 and the currently seated House member just decided to not run again. Being politically active, Schmoe asked the GOP in Kansas about what the game plan was. The answer was the GOP was seeking a conservative that respects the Constitution. With that Schmoe said “If you give me the support, I’ll do it.”

…

She further discussed how being a public servant was never supposed to be a fulltime, life-long career, but rather service to our communities, states, and federal government. Most poignant is that Schmoe observed that our politicians after serving in positions in government are supposed to return to their regular lives and then live under the laws that they’ve created.

Schmoe mentioned the importance of advocacy, noting “Really all that I would add in is that we need more of this, we need more people who are invested. Whether it is authors who are writing books, whether it is content creators, for social media, whether it is advocates, or something else, in the liberty movement, we need more people to step up and run for these positions.” Well, Rebecca Schmoe’s sentiment is received, as well as the fact that she’s putting her money where her mouth is.

Schmoe has been an incredibly effective activist for the right to keep and bear arms for well over a decade, and I’m glad to see that she’s having similar success in her first year as a legislator. Kansas gun owners are lucky to have advocates like her in the statehouse, and I hope the state Senate soon follows the House’s lead and sends HB 2412 to the governor for her signature. Every state should be looking at making it as easy as possible for we the people to exercise our fundamental right to bear arms in self-defense, and Kansas has the opportunity to lead the way for others to follow.

Huge win for gun owners in NC as lawmakers override veto of pistol purchase permit repeal

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North Carolina’s pistol purchase permit law, put in place during the Jim Crow era more than 100 years ago, will soon be a relic of history thanks to the legislature’s override of Gov. Jim Cooper’s veto of the repeal legislation.

The North Carolina Senate did its job in overriding the veto on Tuesday, and Wednesday morning the state House followed suit on a vote of 71-46. Republicans have a supermajority in the Senate but are one vote shy of a veto-proof majority in the House. Three House Democrats had originally voted in favor of SB 41 however, and Rep. Shelly Willingham had publicly stated that he would not be changing his votes on any bill that Cooper vetoed. It looks like Willingham kept his word, but he may have found a way to do so without officially voting against Cooper’s wishes.

Wednesday’s House vote tally showed three Democrats failed to vote on the override, creating enough of a margin to meet the constitutional requirement.

Republicans needed at least one Democratic member to join them, or as few as two Democrats not to vote.

In addition to repealing the Jim Crow-era gun control law, SB 41 also makes a slight modification to the state’s concealed carry laws, repealing a provision that barred concealed carry holders from lawfully carrying in churches with educational facilities attached to them, even if school is not in session.

NC House Speaker Tim Moore released the following statement:

“This legislation preserves the Second Amendment rights of North Carolinians by repealing the outdated pistol permit system. It also allows all churches and other place of religious worship to protect their parishioners and launches a statewide firearm safe storage awareness initiative.

“These have been long-standing goals of Second Amendment advocates in our state, and we have finally brought this legislation over the finish line.”

This is truly a big step forward for North Carolina’s gun laws, and it’s great to see this terrible law undone by the legislature rather than having to wait for the courts to throw out the law on constitutional grounds. Of course, the now-repealed statute still has its defenders, including North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, who was quick to weigh in.

“Today’s move by the General Assembly to repeal our pistol permit law has made our communities less safe. Now, dangerous people – like violent criminals and domestic abusers – will be able to more easily get their hands on guns.

“Too many worry that their kids may not come home from school. Gun violence is a terrifying threat, and eliminating background checks will make the job of law enforcement officers more difficult. While our legislators failed us, I’ll continue to do everything in my power to keep people in our state safe.”

Oh please. Criminals aren’t walking in to their local sheriff’s office to apply for a permit to purchase a handgun as it is, and they will continue to acquire their firearms on the black market, through theft, or through friends or family as they’ve always done. And as Grassroots NC’s Paul Valone pointed out earlier this week, North Carolina sheriffs admitted almost a decade ago that the pistol purchase permitting system was actually protecting some prohibited persons thanks to the quirks of the law.

Because the permits are valid for 5 years and can be used to bypass the usual NICS background check when buying a gun from a federally licensed dealer, it is possible for someone to legally get a permit, then commit a felony or misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, potentially even serving jail time before using the un-trackable paper permit to avoid a gun purchase background check.

Said the NCSA report:

“The NICS … reports included 165 or 23.5% of permits being subject to revocation in Camden County and 35,488 or 38% of permits being subject to revocation in Mecklenburg County. Several sheriffs’ offices had over 40% of their permits reported subject to revocation in the NICS report.” [Emphasis added]

Also:

“The DOJ/ITD and SBI/DCI staff have batch processed 95 sheriffs’ offices files to NICS and NICS returned 195,937 permits as subject to revocation due to an event or condition that occurred subsequent to the issuance of the permit that would have disqualified the individual from receiving a pistol purchase permit at application.” [Emphasis added]

The problem with NICS estimates is that one criminal may hold multiple permits. (Because each paper permit is valid for only one purchase and is turned in at the point of sale, many applicants apply for multiple permits.) NCSA also ran extant permits through a different system, the “Criminal Justice Law Enforcement Automated Data Services” (CJLEADS), which found 2,969 permit-holders in Mecklenburg County subject to revocation.

This is one reason why the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association wasn’t opposed to repealing the pistol purchase permit law. Most sheriffs know how useless the law is in practice, even if some sheriffs (especially those in deep-blue parts of the state) desperately wanted to maintain the authority to subjectively deny someone their ability to purchase a handgun.

The repeal is now officially in effect, as are the new rules for concealed carry in churches with educational facilities, and I’m guessing that gun stores are going to be busy today; not because violent criminals and domestic abusers are suddenly able to get a gun (they’re not), but because peaceable gun owners are rightfully celebrating the end of a century-long infringement on their fundamental right to bear arms in self-defense. Congratulations to North Carolina Second Amendment supporters, and thank you for all of your activism and engagement on this issue over the past few years. Your hard work has paid off, and your right to keep and bear arms is more secure as a result.

Constitutional carry bill inches towards final vote in Nebraska statehouse

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The real suspense over LB 77 isn’t whether or not it has the votes to pass or whether Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen will sign the constitutional carry legislation into law. Instead,  with Democrats filibustering almost every piece of business in the Nebraska unicameral legislature, it’s about whether the bill will get a third and final reading before this year’s session comes to an end.

We’re one step closer after LB 77 cleared a second round of debate on Monday evening, several weeks after the bill received its first hearing in the Senate. The 33 senators who voted in support would be enough to override a veto by Pillen, but that won’t be necessary since the governor has already said he’s eager to sign the legislation into law. Still, opponents are doing all they can do slow down the process, and there were hours of debate before the Senate once again signaled its support for the measure.

“When is enough, enough?” asked State Sen. Jane Raybould of Lincoln, who argued that loosening state gun laws and rescinding local gun ordinances was exactly the opposite approach of what parents are now seeking.

“To dismiss and dismantle local safeguards that keep our communities safer is what we’re doing. It is completely illogical,” Raybould said.

Gordon Sen. Tom Brewer, who sponsored LB 77, said that to better protect schoolchildren, he plans to introduce a bill next year to provide resource officers in every school in the state. He added that he would also consider allowing trained teachers or school staff to carry guns.

His voice rose as he said the bill wasn’t about matters such as preventing suicides, racism and school shootings, but about guaranteeing the right to bear arms in Nebraska.

He read from the State Constitution, which provides the right to bear arms for “security or defense” … “and for lawful common defense” without those rights being denied or infringed by government.

“Evil will do evil,” Brewer said. He cited a recent incident in Lincoln in which a female driver killed two men by ramming them with her vehicle.

Those local ordinances, which include a weird gun registration mandate in the city of Omaha that requires all owners of “concealable handguns” who don’t possess a valid concealed carry license to register their handguns with the city, aren’t dissuading violent criminals from carrying out their armed robberies, carjackings, or gang-related shootings. Getting rid of that registration requirement is the right thing to do from both a constitutional and common sense perspective, and the Omaha police officers union isn’t opposed to LB 77, though the city’s politically-appointed police chief is still objecting to the measure.

Lincoln Police Chief Teresa Ewins, who was lobbying senators from the Rotunda, said LB 77 was “poorly written” and left too many gray areas, such as whether long guns, assault rifles and swords could continue to be banned from certain areas in the city.

Ewins, along with Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer, joined with their prospective city councils and mayors to oppose LB 77. They argued that Nebraska’s largest cities have different issues with guns than rural areas and that the Legislature should not rescind their local ordinances.

“It’s just not fair to our community, and it really risks the lives of my officers,” Ewins said.

If that were the case, you’d think the rank-and-file officers themselves would be standing behind Ewins in opposing the bill. Instead, they’re officially neutral on the measure, and I suspect that most officers are either in support of the change or see it having little impact on their day-to-day job.

As I said, the real question is when lawmakers will hold that crucial third and final vote on LB 77. The good news is that this year’s session is expected to run through mid-June, so there should be plenty of time for legislators to send the constitutional carry bill to Pillen for his signature, even with Democrats trying to filibuster almost every piece of legislation the Republican majority brings to the floor. So far there’s no word on when that third vote will be scheduled, but I doubt lawmakers are going to wait until the last minute. LB 77 has been one of the top priorities for the GOP majority this session, and though progress has been slower than they’d like it looks like it will make it across the finish line.

WaPo wrestles with 400-million privately owned guns

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Even though he made some basic mistakes in his reporting, I’ll give the Washington Post’s Philip Bump a slight amount of credit for trying to wrestle with the conundrum at the heart of the gun control movement: the 400-million (and rising) privately-owned firearms in the United States. All too often, anti-gun activists and their media allies simply gloss over the inconvenient fact that there are an awful lot of gun owners in the United States who aren’t interested or willing to give them up; choosing instead to spout off vague and fuzzy talking points about how there are “too many guns” in circulation and the supposed need for “common sense regulations” to “curb easy access” to firearms.

The problem for Bump (and the gun control movement overall) is that they view crime reduction as a supply-side issue; the only way to reduce violence is to reduce the number of guns in our society. As Bump wrote:

Partisan politics heavily infects both gun ownership and the response to gun ownership, of course. The National Rifle Association’s effort to argue that the best antidote to gun violence is an armed response has become a central tenet of Republican politics. On Monday, The Washington Post published a lengthy look at how the AR-15 became a central part of the political discussion about gun ownership and how it became a talisman of pro-gun advocacy.

It is estimated that there are 20 million AR-15-style rifles in the United States at this point — a powerful, deadly type of weapon that didn’t exist as a consumer product two decades ago.

There have been proposals aimed at reducing that figure. As part of his short-lived 2020 presidential candidacy, former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke (D) proposed buying back assault-style weapons like the AR-15. Even if that were fully successful, of course, there would likely still be some 300 million firearms in the United States, according to that 2012 CRS report. Many of the deadliest firearms would be gone, but hundreds of millions of more would remain.

If significantly reducing gun deaths necessarily means significantly reducing firearm ownership, you can see the problem. It’s hard to think of a way that ownership could be reduced significantly, even if the political will to do so suddenly materialized.

There are far more American guns than there are Americans.

Now, I have no idea where Bump got his claim that AR-15s and other modern sporting rifles didn’t exist as a consumer product until the early 2000s, especially since his employer just ran a 10-part series on the AR-15 that included a look at how it’s been marketed since the 1960s, but that mistake pales in comparison to the idea that public safety is tied to the number of firearms in the hands of peaceable Americans.

The number of firearms in civilian hands has only grown over the decades, while the nation’s crime rate has risen and fallen over that same time period. Violent crime increased from the mid-60s up until the early 1990s before beginning a steady and sustained decline for almost 30 years. As crime rates were dropping, tens of millions of firearms were being sold and millions of Americans were embracing their Second Amendment rights; not only becoming gun owners but acquiring their concealed carry license as well.

Clearly, then, we can reduce significantly reduce violent crime without choking off the supply of firearms. Not only can we do that, we have done it. The fundamental premise of gun control has already been proven to be a lie; more guns does not equal more crime. The anti-gunners actually get it backwards. In order to effectively reduce violent crime involving firearms we need to reduce the demand for guns among criminals, and the best way to do that is to ensure that there are consequences for their crimes; starting with an arrest and ending with a conviction and a meaningful sentence instead of a sweetheart plea deal. This isn’t rocket science, but it’s not gun control either.

Bump is right about one thing, however. It is hard to think of a way that gun ownership could be reduced significantly because most of us aren’t interested in scrapping our Second Amendment rights. Quite the opposite. There have been millions of new gun owners over the past few years, and that number is likely to continue to grow as Americans of all races, colors, and creeds reject the anti-gun activists’ demands to disarm or to never pick up a gun in the first place.