Month: March 2008

Joe over at Joe’s Crabby Shack is pondering whether it’s worth accepting the commission in order to get rid of the permit to purchase requirement.

I don’t know all the ins and outs of politics in Nebraska, but it’s a deal I’d be willing to accept in Pennsylvania.  It’s ideal to be able to outright crush everything, but that’s now always how things will go.  Politics is not a rational or neat process.  This is pure speculation on my part that this is how it went down in Nebraska, but a general outline of how it goes:

1. Gun control legislator sponsors and introduces gun control bill
2. Various interest groups position on the bill, and mobilize their respective constituencies.
3. Politicians respond to that pressure, as said sponsor runs around trying to get support for their bill.  Sponsor realizes he can’t get support thanks to pressure from a certain gun rights group.
4. Sponsor begins amending bill in hopes of finding support.   (Sponsor won’t give up because he has to please his constituents, and avoid losing prestige.)
5. More support will invariably come on board as bill is altered to placate certain interests.  When support levels of said gun control bill begin to get close to having a chance at passage, the end of gun rights groups political power is nearing.
6. At this point lobbyists of gun rights groups have a choice.  Remain opposed and run the risk that a bad, albeit watered down bill will pass over their objections.  Or offer sponsor to add something constituents of gun rights groups want in exchange for dropping opposition to the bill.

Obviously NRA took the latter option here. Was it the best option to take?  That depends on what’s important to you.  Obviously NRA can’t conduct a membership poll in the middle of a big political battle, so they have to do their best based on what they know from interacting with members.  But if you boil down what happened here, a very very bad gun banning bill got turned into something that was largely neutral, and got rid of at least one prior restraint on the right to bear arms.

When they tired a semi-automatic ban in Pennsylvania, a similar thing happened.  It’s very rare in the political process to have to make absolutely no concessions, which is why the founding fathers chose to place the right to bear arms outside of it (only in theory thanks to the courts).  The trick is giving up symbolism and gaining substance.  If Cornhusker State gun owners keep turning out performances like they did with this bill, I don’t think they have much to fear from this commission.

Media article on what happened is here:

“No bill to ban any weapons will pass this Legislature,” Ashford said, explaining his about-face.

Instead, Legislative Bill 958 proposes that the Nebraska Crime Commission study gun violence and illegal firearms trafficking in Nebraska.

The bill also calls for repeal of a 1991 law requiring people to obtain a permit before they can purchase a handgun.

Lawmakers gave the amended measure first-round approval in a 25-13 vote.

Well, I’m glad Ashford his a brick wall in this case.  I think getting rid of a permit to purchase system is a good move.  It’s hard to get rid of bad legiselation even when everyone agrees its bad.  Even harder to turn a gun control bill into something that gets rid of a gun control law.

“I’ve received hundreds of phone calls from NRA members, and I have committed and promised to hundreds of constituents that I would not support this,” said Sen. Arnie Stuthman of Platte Center. “I have no assurances that the NRA has informed its members that it has agreed to the bill.”

Stuthman was one of 13 lawmakers who voted against the bill.

Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha said it was almost funny that lawmakers hesitated to support the bill after the considerable concessions Ashford made to the NRA.

NRA’s alert is out here.

After considerable opposition from Nebraska’s law-abiding gun owners, Senator Ashford significantly revised his original bill by removing the sections of the bill dealing with the reporting of lost or stolen firearms, mandatory gun locks and posting requirements. The new version of his bill would, however, have required the creation of an “Assault Weapons Commission” that would have been charged with making a list of firearms that it believed should be illegal in Nebraska. Despite being gutted from its original form, LB958 was still unacceptable to Nebraska’s gun owners and sportsmen. However, thanks to the hard work of NRA and gun owners in Nebraska, Senator Ashford again agreed to narrow the scope of his bill resulting in Amendment 2235.

Read the whole thing to find out what Amendment 2235 is.

I still maintain my opposition to this course of action, and I say that as someone who is prohibited from having firearms on company property myself, but my opposition is mostly due to property rights concerns. Looks like they are trying to same tact that worked in Georgia, where the bill will be limited to concealed weapons licensees.

Employers are nonetheless hysterical on the issue of guns, and I think there’s things we can do to encourage the change.  There was an approach, I think it was in Arizona, to create a civil action against employers who forbade firearms, essentially making them liable for the safety of their employees.  To me this is a far better way to deal with the problem, but I suspect, politics being politics, it’s a more difficult political course for many legislatures.