NRA-drafted Senate Bill 3002 and Senate Bill 2992 have been place on the agenda in their respective Senate Committees. 

It is certainly no surprise for gun owners to see the New York Times run a story belittling the United States Constitution. After all, the Times has worked for decades to devalue our founding document. “[I]ts influence is waning,” opines the Times. It is “terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights.” The paper faults the Constitution for being difficult to amend and reflective of the times in which it was written. While the Times does not go so far as to claim the U.S. Constitution has been bad for America, it does lament that it is of “little current use to, say, a new African nation.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama administration have devised and implemented a plan that amounts to a gun registration scheme.  The scheme requires federally licensed firearms retailers in states bordering Mexico to report all sales of two or more semiautomatic rifles within five consecutive business days, if the rifles are larger than .22 caliber and use detachable magazines. Yet, under existing law, Holder’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has full access to every record of every firearm transaction by every licensed dealer, whether during a bona fide criminal investigation or simply to enforce compliance with record keeping requirements. This reporting scheme would create a registry of owners of many of today’s most popular rifles–firearms owned by millions of Americans for self-defense, hunting and other lawful purposes.

Legislation that would allow homeowners to use any degree of force, even lethal, against intruders without threat of criminal or civil charges has passed the House of Delegates.

Every so often, a local news story about a victim of crime goes national. Most recently, it was Sarah McKinley, 18, home alone with her 3 month old son, a few days after Sarah’s husband had died of lung cancer. Two men apparently looking to steal pain medicine prescribed for the husband broke in. Sarah grabbed a shotgun and a pistol and killed Justin Martin as he forced entry into her home. How often do such incidents happen? While the results from studies vary, the numbers are large. The National Crime Victimization Survey, for various procedural reasons, is at the low end, showing 108,000 such cases a year (although this was some years back, when crime rates were higher than now). The widely reported Kleck/Gertz study, which has its own set of problems, showed a range of 830,000 to 2.45 million defensive gun uses per year. Other studies have fallen solidly in the middle, with hundreds of thousands of defensive gun uses per year.

For over a year now I have been investigating Fast and Furious, an operation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). This has been a complicated investigation. It’s been made even more difficult because of the Justice Department’s lack of candor and transparency. The Justice Department is stonewalling, interfering with Congress’ constitutional responsibility of oversight.

The panel held its first hearing on House Bill 679 with witnesses for and against but did not vote. The measure by Rep. Jason Spencer, R Woodbine, would allow anyone who can legally own a gun to carry one without having to get a permit from a county probate judge.