News items

The 2012 session of the Alabama Legislature is underway and two bills have been introduced that would further protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners in Alabama: Senate Bill 331 and House Bill 209.  These NRA-drafted bills would prevent employers from discriminating and enforcing policies against the storage of lawfully-owned firearms in employees' locked private motor vehicles parked at work.

Tomorrow, the state Senate Judiciary Committee is tentatively scheduled to hear Senate Bill 149.  This hearing will be at 3 p.m. in Room 208W of the State Capitol.

State Senator Don Balfour (R-9) intends to introduce a floor amendment to Senate Bill 350 which could come up for a vote on the Senate floor in the next few days.  This amendment would allow transportation and storage of firearms in locked personal vehicles while on publicly-accessible parking lots. 

Few issues today are more misunderstood by the general public than the issue of gun control. Many of the commonly-held misconceptions result directly from the media's often skewed coverage of this issue.

I had my new, legally-registered Sig Sauer at home for ten days before I figured out how to take it to a nearby state to shoot it.Although I’d spent four hours in a classroom memorizing the gun laws in Washington, D.C. and then passed a written test at the police station, I was still confused about the logistics of legally transporting a gun somewhere to practice.

As much as gun control advocates might wish otherwise, their attacks are running out of ammo. With private firearm ownership at an all-time high and violent crime rates plunging, none of the scary scenarios they advanced have materialized. Abuse of responsibility by armed citizens is rare, while successful defensive interventions against assaults on their lives and property are relatively commonplace.

An Illinois lawmaker wants gun owners to shell out extra taxes in order to finance a new grant program for trauma centers, a move firearms advocacy groups say amounts to a "sin tax" on law-abiding hunters and target shooters.

Today saw progress on two NRA-backed bills currently moving through the Indiana General Assembly. The Indiana House of Representatives approved Senate Bill 315 on its third and final reading by an overwhelming bi-partisan 76 to 19 vote. Due to a House committee hearing cancellation, Senate Bill 243, previously reported on here, would not have survived this week’s committee report deadline had it not been added as an amendment to House Bill 1279.

The Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on February 6 on Senate Bill 661, an important self-defense bill, but has not yet voted this bill out of committee.  Please call AND e-mail members of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary TODAY and urge them to vote SB 661 out of the committee, so it may move forward though the legislative process.  Contact information for the committee can be found here.

Today, the West Virginia Senate passed Senate Bill 353 unanimously by a 34 to 0 vote!  SB 353 now goes to the House of Delegates for its consideration.

Yesterday, the Colorado House of Representatives passed House Bill 1064 by a 45 to 19 vote.  This “Emergency Powers” legislation now goes to the state Senate for its consideration.

The Minnesota Senate is scheduled to vote on House File 1467 this Thursday, February 23. HF 1467 has been one of the NRA’s top legislative priorities since its introduction last year and was recently passed in the Senate Finance Committee by a 10 to 5 vote.  This important legislation, sponsored by state Senator Gretchen Hoffman (R-10) and state Representative Tony Cornish (R-24B), is expected to face a close vote and your support is needed if we want to pass important pro-gun reforms.

As reported last week, House Bill 1508, legislation relating to shooting ranges, and House Bill 2471, a background check reform bill, both passed in the state House, and Senate Bill 6123, an NRA special license plate bill, passed in the state Senate.  All of the aforementioned bills have now been assigned to policy committees in their opposite chambers, but none have been scheduled for a hearing.  The deadline for the bills to be heard and action by their current committees is this Friday, February 24. 

Attorney General Eric Holder's lies and half-truths in the "Fast and Furious" aftermath are nothing new. A look at the past shows a long history of dishonesty and disdain for the truth and the law

Most know him simply as "Gunny," but NRA Board member R. Lee Ermey is many things. The former Marine Corps drill instructor became a film star after his medical retirement from the Corps in 1972. Most remember his most notable role as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in the film "Full Metal Jacket," but Ermey has starred in dozens of movies and commercials. He is the spokesman for Glock, SOG Knives and Tools and Victory Motorcycles, and also finds the time to serve as an active member of the NRA Board of Directors. Gunny was kind enough to donate his time to the recent production of a new ad for The NRA Freedom Action Foundation's Trigger the Vote campaign, so I took the opportunity to catch up with him on this important effort.

Ever since taking office, President Barack Obama has tried desperately to convince gun owners and sportsmen that he supports the Second Amendment. But actions speak louder than words, and Obama's latest budget proposal contains numerous sneak attacks aimed at the heart of our firearm freedoms.

Despite spending a whopping $2.7 billion on creating and running a long gun registry, Canadians never reaped any benefits from the project. The legislation to end the program finally passed the Parliament on Wednesday. Even though the country started registering long guns in 1998, the registry never solved a single murder. Instead it has been an enormous waste of police officers' time, diverting their efforts from patrolling Canadian streets and doing traditional policing activities.

The news from the Daily Caller website is surprising: David Brock, the founder of Media Matters, had a personal assistant illegally publicly carry a concealed handgun in the District of Columbia in order "to protect Brock from threats." Few organizations have declared their opposition to gun ownership or concealed carry laws as strongly as Media Matters.

For decades, that argument has fallen flat in the courtroom. Judges have routinely held that denying permits to carry loaded firearms in public does not infringe on gun owners' right to keep and bear arms.But now, some gun owners hope that courts will soon reverse course and find that they have a right to secretly tote their weapons in public. Ironically, their optimism stems from a piece of gun control legislation that took effect last month and bans them from openly carrying even unloaded handguns.