This is along the lines of my feeling on the matter. I have the apparently very minority opinion that killing this bill because of the extra privilege afforded legislators is really short sighted and, well, just not very smart.Tracker wrote:Is it possible that bills like legislatures ability to carry anywhere is an attempt at "bootstrapping" a change in CHL laws over more than one session?
it's not like legislators have ever had any cases where they gave themselves special permission and it won't be the last. why choose this particular case to suddenly get altruistic?
It just seems to me that it's quite selfish and short sighted to kill this bill for this reason. I have to wonder, if it was open carry would we all be sticking to our morals like this? what if it was one giant bill with all the things we wanted? would we then be willing to let it slide to make those gains?
I have a hard time believing it's going to be LESS difficult to start from scratch on this same battle again next session than it would be to bring up a "fixit" bill that extended existing privilege to citizens (not to mention that we would have the 30.06 positives in effect).
I think we're tossing the baby out with the bathwater when we get all worked up about what the amendment does. at the end of the day passing it would have resulted in 2 gains for concealed carry and opened the door for another whereas now we have zero gains and have to start over.
even ignoring all that, I think the attitude that is the given reason for killing the bill is a horribly dangerous one for future bills. Were I a democrat I would LOVE what has happened. Now, if there's a bill I don't like that Democrats can't stop, just add an amendment that does this and the Republicans will kill it for them. It seems to me losing this battle (accepting the bill and taking away the weapon to easily kill future bills) would have gone a lot further toward wining the war. To me, voting nay on this for the stated reason is not being able to see the forest for the trees.
I'm completely open (and even hoping) that there's an aspect to this that I'm missing. I would love to change my position on this and jump on the wagon. I can't given what I know at this point and would likely vote against people that voted against the bill for this reason.