A lot of activity on the 2nd Amendment front.
[caption id=“attachment_13149” align=“alignright” width=“359”]
First, the Missouri Senate subpoenaed the Department of Revenue. This story tells you why.
Second, I just received this urgent request for support from Ron Calzone:
March 26, 2013
Bill;
Missouri Senate senator Kurt Schaefer is on a roll…
This evening (Tuesday) his amendment strengthening our right to keep and bear arms (SJR 14) was “perfected” by the entire senate. That’s the first round of approval by the whole Senate.
The perfection vote came after about 5 hours of lone filibuster by Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal.
It’s interesting to note that most of her fellow Democrats are coming down on the side of respecting our 2nd Amendment rights.
Another vote is needed by the entire Senate before this SJR is passed on to the House for the vote. Once the House approves it, it will go on the ballot for the People to vote on – it skips the Governor.
YOUR HELP NEEDED WEDNESDAY (I know this is short notice…)
Also finally moving in the Senate is Sen. Brian Nieves' SB 325 – recall that this is the “complete solution” bill that makes the regulation of guns totally a state matter, getting the federal government out of the way.
Wednesday at 2:30, Nieves' General Laws Committee will meet in the Pershing Gallery, next to the Senate Chamber, to vote on bills they want to advance to the entire Senate. Your presence at that meeting will be good encouragement and support for them to make SB 325 a priority.
Also Wednesday, we needs some teams of 3 or 4 people to canvas House members, asking them to hang the “I support the Second Amendment Preservation Act” posters. We want these posters all over the Capitol!
If you can help with that, email me or text me [number redacted].
We will start about 9:00 am, but you can still help later in the day.
For Liberty,
- Ron
Folks, I can’t make it to Jefferson City tomorrow, but I’d be much obliged if someone would go on my behalf.
If you do go,** don’t forget to check in on Foursquare and Facebook and tweet about your efforts**. Tell the world what you’re doing. We all need the encouragement.
UPDATE From Ron Calzone: #
With a party line 4 - 2 vote, the Missouri Senate General Laws Committee voted to sendSB 325 on to the full senate for consideration. #
This is a major milestone, but there’s still a lot to do before this bill becomes a law.
Namely, the president pro tem, Sen. Tom Dempsey, must place it on the calendar promptly and then majority floor leader, Sen. Ron Richard, must carve out valuable time on the senate floor for debate.
In the mean time, the House version of this bill, HB 426, is not progressing as fast as we would like. There’s a chance the House General Laws committee, chaired by Rep. Caleb Jones, will vote on this bill Thursday. Unfortunately, there is also some talk about rolling some other gun rights bills into HB 436.
We think that’s a bad idea, considering the special focus of this bill, which is to make Missouri immune from federal infringements on the right to keep and bear arms.
We’re hoping that the House will keep HB 436 “pure” and also soon catch up to the Senate.
Speaking of the Senate, stay tuned for news about SJR 14, the amendment to Missouri’s right to bear arms constitutional clause. There may be some additional developments on it very soon.