THIRD AND FINAL UPDATE: As requested by a commenter from the great state of MO, I have changed the title to show that bill was vetoed. We can breathe easier for now, at least until the rabid GOP tries to override the veto in September. Lets hope that reason prevails! I also added a poll to gauge how people feel about the prospects of this bill. Thanks for all the recs and, above all, all the thoughtful comments!
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UPDATE 2: As requested, I have added bridges between quotes from LA Times piece that I found salient. Thanks for all the recs and the comments! My first trip to the rec list.
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UPDATE: To clarify, the bill was vetoed by the Governor and it is not law - at least not yet. The GOP House leader is openly calling for an override when they convene in September and he has enough Republicans to do it without a single Democratic vote. The Senate also appears to have more than enough votes for an override, so as the LA Times piece says:
So it may be just a matter of time before Nixon, a Democrat, finds himself leading the state of "Missuzi."
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I think the title says it all. I saw this gem on this morning's APR:
Jon Healey looks at efforts to turn Missouri into the state that loves, loves, loves guns.
snip
Only a few years ago, Missouri residents passed a state-wide mandate against concealed carry. Of course, the conservative legislature just put those concealed weapons right back, Ah, representative government.
The Jon Healey piece in the LA Times is worth reading in its entirety.
Here are some of the other things that caught my eye:
Still, it's hard to see anything reasonable about House Bill 436, which would allow Missouri residents to sue FBI agents if they're arrested for possessing a sawed-off shotgun, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher or any other federally banned weapon that could be categorized as a "firearm."
So now we know that the NRA and their gun nuts will not be happy with just semi-automatic firearms, they are seeking to expand their "protected" arm to include RPGs. And if that isn't enough:
One criticism of the bill that actually seemed to give its proponents pause is that it would impinge on free speech. A provision of the bill would make it a crime to publish any identifying information about someone who owns or is licensed to carry a gun. As Nixon pointed out, this presents a 1st Amendment problem and would result in such perverse outcomes as barring newspapers from running pictures of "proud young Missourians who harvest their first turkey or deer."
Supporters shrugged off the problem, saying lawmakers could fix it in a later session. Yet they seemed to miss the irony inherent in the provision. The point of the prohibition was to protect gun owners from being targeted by thieves, but this fear tacitly acknowledges that having a gun at home doesn't necessarily make a person safer.
So we see that the First Amendment can take a backseat to the Second Amendment if it furthers the NRA's positions. And if anyone thought that open carry or concealed carry was an issue in urban areas, even Uzi's can be carried concealed:
(Another provision of the law would let people with permits to carry concealed weapons carry openly any firearm less than 16" long. A Mini Uzi extends a mere 14" with its stock folded. Hmmm....)
snip
So it may be just a matter of time before Nixon, a Democrat, finds himself leading the state of "Missuzi."
One thing that Jon Healey does that I don't like is to promote some of the false equivalencies that Republicans push all the time (and traditional media is just too happy to repeat for them):
As the AP noted, this phenomenon is not confined to one side of the political spectrum. Liberals feel just as strongly about states' rights when it comes to decriminalizing marijuana and issuing driver's licenses to immigrants who are in the country illegally as conservatives do when it comes to protecting gun ownership, resisting mandatory health insurance and combating voter fraud.
Really? Combating the non-existent problem of voter fraud is the same as de-ciminalizing pot? Insisting that fire chiefs should be able to conceal carry on the job (what could go wrong when a fire chief goes into a burning building with a loaded gun in his clothes?) is equal to giving rights to immigrants that are exploited by employers?
Wow! Just Wow!
I have yet to be told how full background checks on every sale/transfer of a firearm in any way violates anyone's rights, yet that was blocked from getting to the floor in the Senate. But here we see the influence of the NRA - machine guns and RPGs are just fine! What cold go wrong? (I am sure there will be plenty of GunFail to go around if the MO law stands when it is challenged in court.)
Wow! Just Wow!