What’s Up With Jan Brewer?

I don’t know much about Arizona politics, but Brewer vetoing two pro-gun bills in a row tells me she’s in a lame duck term, or isn’t interested in running again. She signed Constitutional Carry, but that was before her re-election campaign. The Governor may very well feel she’s done enough for us, and since she isn’t running again, doesn’t have to care what we could do to her come election time.

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  3. Brewer Vetoes Campus Carry

13 thoughts on “What’s Up With Jan Brewer?”

  1. There are more than a few people here in Arizona asking that same question. She’s termed out as Gov now (one “accidental” partial term and one elected), We speculate that her people are attempting to make her appear moderate in advance of a run for some other office.

    She’s done a fantastic job of alienating conservatives/gun owners with her veto pen over the past few weeks, and the liberals/Azatlan types here still rant about her being Bush/Hitler in female form, so she’s now suffering a net loss of support here.

    There’s even a “Recall Governor Jan Brewer” page on Facebook that was started by conservatives after her last round of vetoes.

  2. “We speculate that her people are attempting to make her appear moderate in advance of a run for some other office.”

    The lowest forms of human/subhuman trash, in ascending order of lowness, are pimps, child molesters, pollsters, and political consultants. (And there’s plenty of overlap).

    Funny how many political consultants and pollsters seem to lack basic reasoning abilities. If a union coal miner who owns guns in West Virginia is choosing between a liberal Republican who hates unions and hates guns, vs. a liberal Democrat who loves unions and hates guns, that coal miner doesn’t give the Republican his vote for “moving to the center”–the political consultants’ favorite buzz word. He votes for the Democrat, because he agrees with him on one issue and with the Republican on none.

    Similarly, Brewer “moving to the center” on guns just pisses off gun owners, without picking up a single anti-gun vote. Meanwhile, many gun-owning DEMOCRATS will now oppose her, and more importantly, Republicans in the AZ legislature.

    It would really suck if Obama won in 2012 by AZ alone, only because of the wonderkinds who thought Brewer could win higher office by playing to the 25% who support gun control.

  3. But the two bills that reached her desk this year weren’t just contentious, they were fuzzy and fatally flawed.

    Brewer vetoed a measure allowing guns on campus rights of way, a vaguely defined term ripe for mischief. She said no to an omnibus gun bill. Among its many problems, she noted acerbically, was the double standard that exempted the Legislature from the rules it was imposing on other public bodies.

    Maybe she was simply saving the state from having to defend a bad law, and having bad precedent set, while giving pro-gun representatives a chance to get better bills to her desk.

  5. Among its many problems, she noted acerbically, was the double standard that exempted the Legislature from the rules it was imposing on other public bodies.

  6. Among its many problems, she noted acerbically, was the double standard that exempted the Legislature from the rules it was imposing on other public bodies.

    This is a mis-characterization of a section that reserved firearms regulatory authority to the legislature. It was a reiteration/expansion of our preemption law, which apparently does not apply to our universities and some counties.

    The AZ Senate currently has a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on carry.

    Sebastian is correct, we’ll be back with even better bills and hold to her words in the veto letters.

  8. She has to deal with a crazy legislature that is more interested in making the news than writing good law.

    It’s not fair to ask everyone to read these bills before commenting on her veto of them (or is it?), but they were bad. Bad for gun owners, bad for Arizona and bad for the movement.

    The authors may have had good intent, but “intent” needs to be backed by good authorship. The first bill she vetoed actually opened more doors for anti-gun jurisdictions to arrest Arizona residents for minor infractions! That requires a veto.

    I go through these bills (the text) and cringe. Sometimes it looks like they were written by a committee of high school students. I get the sense there are few real adults in charge – some outspoken “leaders” in the legislature just write stuff and everyone else gloms onto it for fear they will be branded liberals for pointing out the obvious – the bills are poorly written. Someone needs to be the grown-up in all this. Law should be written deliberately and carefully, not sloppy, like this.

    I say give the Governor some credit until she vetoes something well written. If we demonize her, we lose a friend. Our scorn is better placed on those who sloppily author legislation that could put good people in jail for doing nothing “wrong”.

    The NRA needs to send strong legal minds out there to work the details and broker working laws. Maybe even the SAF or its CCRKBA component…someone from “the movement” who could speak to the faults in these bills without risk of being branded a closet anti-gun agent of evil – you know…like we are doing to Brewer right now.

  9. I remember when this originally happened, and I and others pointed out that both bills had some pretty severe flaws – which she also pointed out, and told the legislature what needed to be done to fix them.

    IIRC, keeping the status quo and having a chance to try again next year was better than passing these seriously flawed bills now. Unfortunately, like in most political movements, there are many people who stop listening at “she vetoed a pro-gun bill” and don’t care about anything else. The bills were pitched as pro-rights, and she vetoed them, so she must be evil – never mind what the bills actually said.

  10. There’s nothing preventing a concerned voter (particularly a known pro-rights supporter with an advocacy group behind them) from going beyond merely asking their legislator to get a law passed and actually writing a bill, as they think it should read, and giving it to that legislator.

    Since weapon’s statutes are usually pretty short, and there typically aren’t many of them in a generally “pro-gun” state, even for a layman (with a legal bent) it’s not that difficult to take a prior passed bill on the same subject, say “shall-issue”, and cutting and pasting the relevent portions of how you want the referenced statutes modified to affect, say, campus carry.

    If they don’t have to start from square one and merely have to have their staff double check what you give them through an attorney you are more likely to get what you want.

    That’s what lobbyists -do-, after all.

  12. Ooh, ooh, I know…

    If you can legally own it, you can carry it. If you can’t legally own it, you have a mechanism to change that status.

    That’d do it in brief, I think.

    Carberry Correllaries:

    Interior private property, even that open to the public, should be able to ask you to leave. Let the market sort it out.

    Government facilities open to the public in the normal course of business should have to have armed security, detectors and storage to bar carry inside.

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