Ready On The Right

MONTGOMERY - A Senate committee today shot down three bills that would have allowed students and professors to legally carry firearms for personal safety and campus protection.

In response to well-publicized campus shootings over the past year, particularly last year’s tragedies at Virginia Tech, Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo, sponsored three bills that would have allowed policies authorizing certain students and professors to carry firearms.

“We’re overly concerned because there is no record of law-abiding students or professors going off their rockers and using weapons” on campuses, Erwin said in response to committee senators speaking against the bills.
http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20080326/NEWS/262144051/1011/news&tc=yahoo

Damn, seems as if Alabama has a Jimmy Naifeh clone down there.  Sorry, folks.   Ed 7:04pm 27MAR08

By Matthew Keenan

March 27 (Bloomberg) — Oklahoma lawmakers have a plan to prevent violent outbreaks at colleges: let students carry guns.

The state’s House of Representatives voted March 13 to allow students and employees who have law-enforcement or military backgrounds, or who undergo training, to carry concealed weapons on public campuses. If the measure is enacted, Oklahoma will be the fourth state where collegians can be armed legally, as a result of legislative, court or administrative action in the past five years.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=atT5pXq6SGis

Are you listening, Jimmy Naifeh?  Ed 6:59pm 27MAR08

Josh Hafenbrack | Tallahassee Bureau

March 27, 2008

TALLAHASSEE - Florida residents could pack guns along with their briefcases as part of their workday routine, under a controversial measure endorsed by the Florida House on Wednesday. 

 http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/orl-guns2708mar27,0,7084835.story?track=rss

Are you listening, Jimmy Naifeh?  Ed 6:54pm 27MAR08

Well, here I am commenting on my own post:

D.C. Gun Crackdown Meets Community Resistance

The current issue of Sports Illustrated reports that the nation’s capital suffers from 37% adult illiteracy and a high school graduation rate of 59% with only 9% of D.C. public school students going on to graduate from college within five years.

Do you think more effort invested in education would pay greater dividends than depriving D.C. citizens of their constitutional rights?  Ed 6:37pm 27MAR08

By MATT SEDENSKY, Associated Press Writer

The cake had been served and the children were jumping up and down in a big, inflatable castle when the birthday party turned to bedlam.

Clarence McGraw’s jaw dropped as he saw the visitors coming, guns drawn. The screaming began.

Children ran everywhere in the courtyard of the low-income apartment complex; adults fell to the ground. Bullets flew. The killers wounded three youngsters, but for reasons police can’t explain, it was 19-year-old McGraw they were after.

As McGraw lay in the center of the green square, the gunmen stood over him and fired again. He was shot 15 to 20 times in all.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080326/ap_on_re_us/ak47s;_ylt=AgtydAN23cu49nP60L0dIVis0NUE

Here we go again.  First it was the big, bad, black AR-15 that looked so mean it must be mean,  never mind it fires one round per trigger pull just like your deer rifle.  It just looked so damn bad!  Now it is the AK-47 which, again, in civilian hands fires one round per trigger pull.  The cabal of liberty hating, gun grabbing sheep represented by the liberal media (that is redundant, isn’t it?) are at it again.  Given a fact sheet printed in 18 point bold faced type, those people would ignore it, just as they do the real world.  Ed 10:26am 27MAR08

Our View
The state Senate is scheduled to vote this afternoon on a bill that would close all information in Tennessee’s conceal-and-carry gun permits.
Another part of SB 3755, sponsored by Sen. Mark Norris, R-Collierville, would make it a Class E felony, punishable by a term of one to two years in jail and a $1,000 fine, to publish any such information.

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008803260439

The bill has been reset to be heard by the sub-committee on 4-3-08

Ed 10:19 27MAR08

Bill threatens jail for publishing permit data
By RACHEL STULTS and JENNIFER BROOKS • Staff Writers • March 26, 2008

The records of everyone licensed to carry a handgun in Tennessee would be sealed from public view by a proposal working its way through the legislature.
The bill, sponsored by state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, R-Collierville, and state Rep. Eddie Bass, D-Prospect, would make Tennessee the 28th state in the nation to make secret its list of residents who have applied for or received a handgun-carry or concealed-carry permit. Several other states have similar bills in the works.

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008803260429

See the next post for the big media attitude, in this case the Tennessean, toward this legislation.
Ed 10:11 27MAR08

POSTED: 6:49 am EDT March 24, 2008

UPDATED: 6:43 pm EDT March 24, 2008

WASHINGTON — A crackdown on guns is meeting some resistance in the District.

Police are asking residents to submit to voluntary searches in exchange for amnesty under the District’s gun ban. They passed out fliers requesting cooperation on Monday.

The program will begin in a couple of weeks in the Washington Highlands neighborhood of southeast Washington and will later expand to other neighborhoods. Officers will go door to door asking residents for permission to search their homes.

Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said the “safe homes initiative” is aimed at residents who want to cooperate with police. She gave the example of parents or grandparents who know or suspect their children have guns in the home.

Community leaders went door to door in Ward 8 Monday to advise residents not to invite police into their homes to search for weapons.

Related: Watch The Report | Take Survey “Bad idea,” said D.C. School Board member William Lockridge. “I think the people should not open your doors under any circumstances, don’t even crack your door, unless someone has a warrant for your arrest.”

Ron Hampton, of the Black Police Officers Association, said he doesn’t expect many in the community to comply.

“This is one of those communities where the police even have problems getting information about crimes that are going on in the community, so to suggest, now, that the police have enough community capital in their hand that the community is going to cooperate with them, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Hampton said.

If weapons are recovered, they will be tested and destroyed if they are not found to be linked to any other crimes.

A police spokeswoman said that if evidence of other crimes is found during voluntary searches, amnesty will be granted for that crime as well.

“Chief Lanier has been clear,” Traci Hughes said. “Amnesty means amnesty.”

http://www.nbc4.com/news/15688264/detail.html?taf=dc

Be sure to read some of the 300 plus comments on the web site.  Appears the good folks in D.C., the vast majority of them, are not pleased with their gun laws, their mayor, or their police.  Wonder why?  Ed 3:20pm 26MAR08

Does anyone know who’s on first? My suspicion is the Supremes will surprise us all when they hand down a ruling in June.  Ed 10:22 26MAR08 

In a “move that surprised some observers,” the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday, attorney Alan Gura, appearing before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the federal guard who sued the District of Columbia in 2003, claiming he feels unsafe because he’s not allowed to keep his guns at home, “appeared to concede large chunks of his argument, moving away from an absolutist position on gun rights.”

“He concurred, at one point, with Justice Stephen Breyer that a ban on machine guns or plastic guns” (whatever those are) “would be constitutional because those weren’t the kind of arms normally carried by members of state militias in the early days of the United States.”

Was it a failure of nerve under pressure, or did somebody get to this guy?

http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/16936861.html

http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=3721The Tennessee House defeated the following pro-gun bills

· House Bill 410 <· http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/bills/currentga/BILL/HB0410.pdf>, sponsored by State Representative Curry Todd (R-95), Restaurant Carry legislation (similar to NRA-backed HB 702) · House Bill 3667 <· http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/bills/currentga/BILL/HB3667.pdf>, sponsored by State Representative Frank Niceley (R-17), would have allowed any resident, who has a valid handgun carry permit, to possess his or her handgun while within the boundaries of any state park. This legislation passed during the 2007 session, but was amended in the full House Judiciary Committee with a posting requirement attaching a huge fiscal note that ensured its failure in the Budget Committee.

· House Bill 3014 <· http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/bills/currentga/BILL/HB3014.pdf>, sponsored by State Representative Stacey Campfield (R-18), would have authorized full-time faculty and staff at colleges and universities in Tennessee to carry handguns. · House Bill 3293 <· http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/bills/currentga/BILL/HB3293.pdf>, sponsored by State Representative Nathan Vaughn (D-02), would have allowed for persons who were voluntarily hospitalized in a mental facility to obtain a handgun carry permit after seven years.

The following bills were deferred to Wednesday, April 2 pending further evaluation:· House Bill 702 <· http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/bills/currentga/BILL/HB0702.pdf>, sponsored by State Representative Joe McCord (R-08), allows a person who has a valid Right-to-Carry permit to carry a firearm into restaurants where alcohol may be served, as long as the permit holder is not consuming alcohol or is not otherwise prohibited by posting provisions. This important Right-to-Carry reform measure passed the State Senate by a vote of 24 to 6 in January.

· House Bill 3137 <· http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/bills/currentga/BILL/HB3137.pdf>, sponsored by State Representative Eddie Bass (D-65) and State Representative Mike Bell (R-23), which restricts public access to the records of concealed Right-to-Carry permit holders and prohibits their publication; and · House Bill 3683 <· http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/bills/currentga/BILL/HB3683.pdf>, sponsored by State Representative Matthew Hill (R-07), would reduce the Right-to-Carry permit application fee from $115 to $100. The current fee is one of the most expensive in the country and is aiding the Tennessee Department of Safety’s five million dollar surplus.

Finally, House Bill 3509 <http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/bills/currentga/BILL/HB3509.pdf> passed by a voice vote. HB 3509, sponsored by State Representatives Ulysses Jones (D-98) and Henry Fincher (D-42), would reform Tennessee’s “Castle Doctrine” laws to expand your right to self-defense to include businesses. This legislation, last on the agenda, was passed without any discussion from the Sub-Committee.

State Representative Janis Sontany (D-53)(615) 741-6861

State Representative Henry Fincher (D-42)(615) 741-1875

rep.henry.fincher@legislature.state.tn.us <mailto:rep.henry.fincher@legislature.state.tn.us>State Representative Eddie Bass (D-65)(615) 741-1864

State Representative Rob Briley (D-52)(615) 741-2184

rep.rob.briley@legislature.state.tn.us <mailto:rep.rob.briley@legislature.state.tn.us>State Representative Judd Matheny (R-47)(615) 741-7448

State Representative Eric Watson (R-22)(615) 741-7799