The vote to send it to conference committee was overwhelming.... 70 something against to 90 something in favor. It is hard to see how a 20+ vote difference would suddenly swing the other way and vote to pass it in the event that the committee reports the bill back to the floor unchanged. That is a political fiction existing only in the fairyland imaginations of the most fringe OC supporters.
THAT is why the Huffhines amendment was a poison pill. If the Senate had voted to pass the bill as is, without creating a scenario where their final bill conflicted with the House's final bill, HB 910 would have been signed into law yesterday. Instead, and as I understand it, the conference committee now faces these possibilities in order to iron out the differences:
- The first possibility is that the committee would vote to send the bill back out, unchanged, for an up or down vote in the House. IF THAT HAPPENS, there are only two possible outcomes:
- Least likely outcome of that: the 20+ vote margin in the House that originally voted against the bill in its current form, change their minds and they vote to pass the bill as is.
- Most likely outcome: the 20+ vote margin in the House that originally voted against the bill in its current form, all stand firm on their conviction that the Huffines Amendment makes bad law, and they refuse to pass it......for the same reasons they refused to pass it before.
- The second possibility is that the conference committee would recommend changes to the bill and refer it back out. If they make changes, the following things have be be resolved before June 1st..........and let me remind all those who kept touting how smart Huffines was, today is May 28th and it is nearly 2pm as I write this..... so for all practical purposes, June 1st is only 3 days away. That means that there are 3 days to get this thing done, IF THE LEGISLATURE TACKLES NO OTHER BUSINESS (and it is not the case that there is no other business to tackle):
- The Bill has to go back to the Senate, where it absolutely WILL be filibustered, killing any hope of passing OC in this session. THANK YOU Senator Huffines, for your unswerving and badly articulated defense of principle, even if it means killing a good bill.
AND
- The Bill has to go back to the House, were time will run out before they can reconcile ANYTHING with a filibustered Senate. And again.... THANK YOU Senator Huffines for your brand of political genius.
Please God, WHEN are the OCT apologists going to admit that they got taken downtown and spanked by reality? HERE is the reality:
- HB 910, sans Huffine's meddling, was not a perfect bill, but it was a good bill. Without Huffine's meddling, we would have had OC signed into law today. Period. That is a given fact.
- There is historical precedence for this. When CHL first passed, it was not perfect either, and it has been amended and tweaked several times over the years to make it better. What examples? Here:
- Amended to add 30.06.
- Amended to remove penalties for failure to disclose CHL to LEO.
- Amended to change wording for unintentional failure to conceal.
- Amended to remove the requirement for the licensee to take a CHL renewal class.
- Amended to reduce license fees for veterans and LEOs.
- Amended to add employee parking lot protections.
- There are more that I won't bother to list here, EXCEPT to say that:
- It MIGHT have been amended to allow OC this year, if Huffines hadn't opened his pie hole.
- We MIGHT have gotten Campus Carry passed if OC had not sucked up all the oxygen in the room.
- We MIGHT have gotten an expanded list of places where we can carry, but OC burned up all the time and political capital.
Etc., etc., etc.
To you guys who think Huffines is a principled genius, it's NOT just that we might not get OC (it doesn't look good), but we also didn't get a lot of other equally important things because, as the debates dragged on and on over OC, either time ran out, or the political capital necessary ran out, before those other things could be accomplished. ON THE OTHER HAND,
IF Huffines had not butted in and screwed it all up, we would have at least had OC, even if we didn't get the other things. BUT.....
BECAUSE Huffines butted in, the only possibility we have of salvaging anything this session is if those 20+ votes in the House who would not vote to pass the amended bill will change their minds and vote in favor, as is. I like a snowball's chance in hades as better odds.
Thank you for cutting off all of our noses to spite your face.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT
