New life for three important gun bills

by Kevin Starrett

At the last possible moment, the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled work sessions for three important gun bills. In some cases, we’ve been working on getting these bills passed for more than one session.

This is great news – if these three gun bills hadn’t been scheduled yesterday for work sessions, the bills would have been dead in committee.

While there can certainly be changes, HB 2797 has been scheduled for May 26 at 8 AM. This bill does nothing more than clarify a lawful way to transport a handgun on a motorcycle and any firearm on a snowmobile or ATV. It is non-controversial and has had no opposition, but it is also the bill we believe most likely to be used as a vehicle to ban licensed carry in schools. So, while it is a victory that it has been scheduled, the battle is far from over. We still need to make sure the bill is not turned into something its sponsor never intended.

House Bills 2787 and 2792 are scheduled for June 1 at 8:30 AM. These two bills protect the privacy of CHL holders and recognize the concealed handgun licenses from other states respectively.

Make no mistake, it was grassroots pressure that forced the Committee Chair to put these bills on the schedule. But we have a long way to go. As we have said, we believe there may be some very damaging amendments that could be attached to these bills, so we still need to keep the pressure on to make sure they are passed with no amendments.

Committee Chairmen typically do NOT schedule bills they don’t plan to pass, but this committee is controlled by anti-gun Democrats, so they might very well have some tricks up their sleeves.

Click on committee if you’d like to join in urging the Senate Judiciary Committee to pass these three bills as they are, with no amendments.