Concealed Carry Reform - As
Concealed Carry Reform - As we slouch toward our next legislative session, many questions remain to be answered. One question that seems less and less in doubt is this: By the end of this session, Minnesota will join 34 other American states in adopting *some* sort of "Shall Issue" concealed carry law.
Minnesota Concealed Carry Reform Now has, over the last eight years, carried out perhaps the most amazing piece of grass-roots political organization in recent memory: in eight years, MN-CCRN has gone from being unable to get an audience with most legislators, to being an "A" list force to be reckoned with.
How much so? Two straight DFL gubernatorial candidates (Humphrey and Moe) had bucked the national trend by making opposition to concealed carry reform a key element in their campaigns. And both have been shredded. Now, that wasn't the only reason, of course - but if Minnesotans truly opposed "shall issue" reforms, you'd think they'd have expressed it at the polls, no? Pro-reform candidates have won the last two gubernatorial races.
In the meantime, the various iterations of the Personal Protection Act keep getting closer and closer. In the 2001 session, the MPPA passed the House, and came within two votes of passing in a hostile Senate.
Two votes. In a Senate that was vastly more hostile, at least in terms of rank and file membership, than today. More on that later.
In the meantime, while the political value of opposing "shall issue" has proven to be virtually nil, some former opponents are coming on board. The rank and file of the National Association of Chiefs of Police Minnesota Sheriffs' Association have both come out in upport of the MPPA.
So the traditional trope "Law enforcement opposes this" is false.
For all that, it's not all roses for supporters of freedom and opponents of Victim Disarmament. But more on that later.
THE PROPOSAL
The nuts and bolts of the proposed law have changed a bit. The changes could be "good" or "bad" depending on your point of view, but we'll come back to that.
While this year's bill is still being drafted, here are the salient points to look out for. Applicants must apply to a County Sheriff, and:
- Be 19 years of age or older (down from 21 last session)
- Pass a rigid background check, and show no record of
- felonies
- violent misdemeanors
- alcohol or drug abuse
- violent mental illness (no violence or threats
against self or others)
- presence on any law-enforcement watch lists (like the Gang Task Force list of known bangers)
- Pass a skills course, teaching the practical AND legal
aspects of armed self-defense, given by a recognized
and licensed handgun self-defense instructor,
- Fork over $50, of which the Sheriff gets 80%.
Then - and here's the big change from previous years - the County Sheriff would have the ability to deny the license for cause. The applicant would have the ability to appeal the denial and challenge the given causes to a judge.
BUT WHY?
I've been writing about the MPPA in one form or another for the last seven years on this list. I've spend a fair amount of time and effort explaining the benefits of "shall-issue" laws (or, in the case of the new MPPA proposal, "just-about-always-issue" laws). And I'm sure I will again.
But suffice to say they boil down to three main points:
- At best, violent crime drops.
- At worst, violent crime does not rise
- Since 1983, 25 states have adopted one form' of shall-issue law or another. NONE have repealed it. In fact, in no state has any repeal effort gotten any steam, and in many states, some of shall-issue's former opponents are now on board, or have at least retracted their earlier opposition.
So it's off to the Capitol we go!
HANDICAPPING
And when we get there, there's good news, and there's bad news.
Good: The House and the Governor are both solidly pro-MPPA. The winning margin of two years ago is solidified, and Tim Pawlenty will pitch in when the chips are down. And the Senate is much more closely-matched than it was two years ago, when only two votes separated us from that year's MPPA passing into law.
Bad: While the Senate is a closer race, the DFL still controls it - and by all indications, committee chairs are going to be even more dogmatically Metrocrat than ever before. And that is the victim-disarmament lobby's only real hope this session - keep the MPPA, whether a standalone bill or amended to another bill, bottled up in committee. So while Democrats (other than Roger Moe) backed away from Gun Control like a toddler from an oopsie this past election, you can expect the back-room finagling to be absolutely epic. Keeping potential victims disarmed is core DFL orthodoxy - one must not expect them to go gently.
MN-CCRN has won some incredible victories - basically, they've found almost every vote that CAN be considered "swing" on this issue, and turned most of them. To have come within two votes in
a Senate that was DFL-controlled, and whose GOP caucus wasn't much farther to the right, was an amazing feat. And there may be a few more swing votes out there - and a few state legislators who
know full well that the state's firearms owners are among the most enthusiastic and diligent voters of all.
Highly-placed sources at MN-CCRN say that when they first went out to campaign for concealed carry reform, they gave themselves "a 30% chance of passing, and a 70% chance of NOT passing a law. Today, we have an 80% chance of passing, and a 20% chance of not passing" some sort of concealed carry reform law.
This is the year. I've been saying it for two years, and I believe it in my bones. This is the year our racist, sexist, paternalistic carry law gets scrapped once and for all.
See you at the Capitol!
Posted by Mitch at
December 5, 2002 05:05 PM
