Category: Gun Rights

By a vote margin of 85-35, the Mississippi House voted to concur with the Senate and send their Constitutional Carry Bill to the governor, who is expected to sign. Mississippi will become the 10th Constitutional Carry state, on the heels of Idaho. We have made the 1/5th mark!

I really like the good news. But we’re showing we can improve states that were already pretty solid in. Bloomberg, meanwhile, is using his fortune to nibble at the periphery. As a great man once said, we have to punch back twice as hard. Bloomberg needs to be dealt an epic defeat in one of the states he’s got his eye on, like Oregon, Washington, or Nevada.

Now, I better end this post before I have to make my fingers type “Mississippi” again :)

NRA is asking Colorado members to call their Senators. It’s up for a vote today. I don’t know what the numbers look like, but we have to keep trying. This is not a compromise bill that raises the limit to 30, it’s outright repeal. If politicians start thinking the anger over the 2013 bill is diminishing, Colorado will be stuck with this forever.

Looks like most of the gun control bills the Dems were pushing in Oregon have died for this year, but they are vowing to come back for another try in 2017. The article notes the failed recall petitions against representatives who voted for it. That tactic isn’t going to work everywhere and in all circumstances. Colorado’s recalls had the added boost that the magazine ban mobilized a lot more people than would have been had it just been the private transfer ban (which I don’t think a lot of the rank and file really understand well).

Looking back to a decade ago, the big anti-gun states were California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York. Maryland and Hawaii were somewhat unfriendly, but they had a ban on “assault pistols” and a magazine law that was relatively meaningless. I would now put Maryland in the hard anti-gun column, and to keep Hawaii company, we now have Colorado, and maybe Oregon if we don’t stop it there.

This is why I think federal preemption is going to be important going into the future. We can’t fight a war of attrition with Mike Bloomberg state-by-state until we lose enough ground to lose federally as well. We have to solidly and decisively deal him a blow so hard he’ll find other things to spend his time and money on. Unfortunately, the party we need to accomplish this is currently a train wreck.

The media has been going nuts over the story that a petition is being circulated to allow carry at the GOP convention. This was in the realm of “never going to happen,” and the reason why has just revealed itself. Even at the NRA Annual Meeting, where despite media lies you can actually carry, when the Secret Service comes to a venue with a candidate under their protection, there’s no carry and there’s security checkpoints at the entrance to the venue. You’ll almost certainly see that at work in Louisville this year.

Without apparently any sense of irony, a busybody in Lexington, MA is pushing the town to enact a sweeping gun ban. I guess in the end, General Gage wins. The yankees have gone and disarmed themselves! At the very place where eight patriots gave their lives trying to prevent exactly what this naive man wants to do. Fortunately, there is at least some sense left in Lexington:

Many of the approximately 30 who spoke in opposition to the proposed ban mentioned Lexington’s history at the dawn of the American Revolution, saying the community that has a Minuteman holding a rifle on its town green should not be the place leading the charge to toughen weapons laws.

There’s no legacy or patriot grave these people wouldn’t piss all over to accomplish their gun free utopia. They have no concern for the history and traditions of this country at all.

Quite a lot happened Friday, it seems. Let’s start with the good news:

West Virginia overrides the governor’s veto and becomes the eighth US state the eliminate the requirement to obtain a permit before carrying a firearm.

Father Pfleger’s suit against suburban gun shop regulations has been dismissed.

4th Circuit has granted en banc review of the Kolbe v. Hogan case, the case which challenges Maryland’s assault weapons ban. This is not good news. However, if the en banc panel overturns the 3 judge panel which ordered strict scrutiny, Maryland would be the victor and we could always decline to seek cert before the Supreme Court. In an odd way, if we won, we’d be in greater jeopardy.