Here’s the list of Republicans who voted “no” on HR822:
- Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI)
- Rep. Robert Dold (R-IL)
- Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY)
- Rep. Peter King (R-NY)
- Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA)
- Rep. Robert Turner (R-NY)
- Rep. Robert Woodall (R-GA)
You can somewhat understand why someone from New York, Illinois, or California might feel they need to vote no on this. But the most shame worthy in this whole vote are Rep. Woodall and Rep. Amash. I’ll have more to say on Amash later. Don’t let any of them off the hook, but Amash and Woodall should be particular targets.
UPDATE: If you want to counter a Brady Twitter meme, you can click here to chide some of the key Republican transgressors.
Peter King is a giant douchebag. If he’s not trying to hold McCarthy like hearings, he’s doing crap like this.
Yeah, Peter King is douchebag of the century. That’s the same slimeball who wanted to make it a FEDERAL crime to carry a firearm in your own state if a federal representative happened to be within a 1000 yard radius. Fuck you, douchebag, stay in your little 10 square mile enclave in DC if you want to be 1000 yards away from the nearest CCW. You are not welcome here in PA you fascist fucktard!
Re-tweeted by… 3 others.
Does that really need countering? XD
Can’t hurt. It’s kind of sad, though, when I can have more of an impact than the Brady Campaign.
Unshaven Unemployed Slacker has more influence than a highly-paid lobbying team? Heh.
(I kid, I kid; at least about the slacker part. You work harder than I could ever imagine doing)
How about thanking the Dems that voted for our rights & upholding the constitution.
More please.
Pete King has always been antigun. He claims he knows all about guns because his father was a cop. How’s that for qualifications?
King became notorious among his Long Island constituents for selling his vote on the federal Assault Weapons Ban to Bill Clinton in exchange for getting Gerry Adams a visa and entry into the White House. The cause of Irish Republicanism is more important to Pete King than the rights of his constituents. King later became an occasional social guest of Bill Clinton in the White House, and bucked his party by voting against Clinton’s impeachment.
King is a classic New York RINO.
I’m not going to come down on Woodall because I don’t support the bill myself. Something like this should come after a Supreme Court decision affirming a right to carry on some level.
If (and that’s a big “if”) HR 822 gets signed into law, the possible merits and urgency of a court challenge could be diluted.
Peter King’s NRA D rated.
So it’s not like pressure on him from gun folks is likely to be effective – he’s not on our side.
(I don’t know if he’s a “RINO” as Sara M says so much as “pandering to his local constituents”, who might well not be the same as Republicans in the rest of the country.)
Make sure you know why they voted no. I don’t know their reasons, but some may have voted no because two bad uses of the commerce clause don’t make a right.
Except it’s mostly based on the 14th Amendment power.
I don’t see anything in the 14th that gives the federal government this kind of authority. Only the first clause could possibly be relevant, and that just sets limits on what the states can do. The supreme court has never said that citizens have the right to carry (as far as I can tell) let alone to carry concealed. They have said that some restrictions (such as a ban on concealed carry) are permissible. It doesn’t seem like this is an issue of equal protection or the abridgement of privileges or immunities.
It’s not like I’m going to loose any sleep over this if it becomes law, since I think that no state should ban concealed carry in the first place. But if I were a federal representative I would’ve voted no on principle.
From the 14th Amendment, Section 5:
Understand that originally, none of the Bill of Rights were understood to apply to the states. The 14th Amendment made the Bill of Rights apply to the states
The states, through a patchwork reciprocity system, are interfering with the right to bear arms and the right to travel. So Congress has the power to remedy this.
Read the Heller opinion. The court is pretty clear there’s a right to carry. It the Court thinks Congress got it wrong, they can say so. But HR822 is conservative enough that I think the Courts would be hard pressed to say that it’s not a valid exercise of Congress’ 14th Amendment powers.
And even beyond that, it could work under the Full Faith and Credit clause. Commerce clause is a little more dubious.
I agree: if there’s a right to carry, then all the states must allow carrying under the 14th Amendment. Likewise, if there exists the right to carry concealed, no state can ban it.
I did go back and read the majority opinion, and I admit I was mistaken before. Scalia goes into quite a bit of detail about the meaning of “bear arms” and the Heller decision does affirm that the 2nd amendment protects the right to carry arms. So I have to amend my earlier position; if congress passed a bill saying all states must allow carrying firearms, that would be constitutional (and unnecessary because that’s what the 2nd Amendment already says).
But HR822 goes beyond that, and asserts that the federal government has the authority to overrule sate laws regarding the carry of concealed weapons. The 2nd doesn’t mention concealed weapons, and the Heller decision specifically allows bans on concealed weapons, or at the very least leaves open their possibility: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited… For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues.”
So you’ve partially convinced me. I now agree that congress has under the 14th amendment the power to require states to allow open carry. But until the Supreme Court recognizes the right to carry concealed, I still don’t agree that the federal government has any say over the matter.
It should be pretty simple to construct a case to overturn those 19th century precedents, simply by playing with the definition of “concealed,” though.
James Madison took care of it. The right to keep and bear arms wasn’t intended for hunting or shooting paper targets in the back yard. It’s the “people’s” God given right to self-preservation, the right to revolt and remove a tyrannical government. States with gun control laws have already broke their Constitutional agreement with “the people.” Requiring a permit or legislating how a weapon can be carried is infringing on the 2nd Amendment. Period.
The fact that HR822 even exists is a clear indication something is very wrong. Gun permits are no different than forcing people to buy a license/pay a tax for the right to speak in public. If this nonsense continues, our Orwellian police state will be dishing out wood shampoos for speaking without a permit. God forbid you do it across State lines!