NRA News

This Wednesday, June 19, the Senate Criminal Justice Committee will be taking testimony on legislation to further protect the confidentiality of Concealed Handgun License (CHL) holders, Senate Bill 60.  This important hearing will start at 9:00 a.m. in the North Hearing Room of the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus.

The counties of Boulder, Larimer, Gilpin and Clear Creek have joined in partnership with the US Forest Service and Colorado Parks and Wildlife to develop criteria to guide land managers in identifying appropriate places for recreational target shooting.  The North Front Range Recreational Sport Shooting Management Partnership has scheduled four open houses (listed below) to provide information to the public about this project.  The Partnership wants feedback from the public about the criteria, which could include the distance from the shooting site to residential areas and other recreation sites (i.e. campgrounds), ease of access to the site, availability of parking, potential environmental impacts, fire hazards and other considerations to identify sites that provide safe and responsible shooting.  The project is also designed to reduce conflicts that have arisen with recreational shooting and other recreation activities and with homeowners along the boundary lines of public land.

Connecticut gun manufacturers will welcome not one red state governor early next week, but two -- as Texas Gov. Rick Perry's tour Monday is followed by a visit from South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard later Monday and Tuesday.

Representative Mike Kelly (R PA) introduced an amendment last night to H.R. 1960, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 (NDAA), to prohibit federal funding for the implementation of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) for one year. The amendment was adopted unanimously by voice vote and included in the final passage of the NDAA, which Rep. Kelly voted to support.

The House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution Friday that expresses the sense of Congress that active duty military living or stationed in the District of Columbia should have the right to carry a gun.

Time is running out!  The following bills are scheduled to be heard on Tuesday, June 18, in the Senate Public Safety Committee.  Please call AND e-mail members of the Senate Public Safety Committee and respectfully urge them to OPPOSE AB 180 and AB 231.  These onerous and misguided bills will do nothing to reduce violent crime and will only turn currently law-abiding citizens into criminals should they be enacted.  You cannot let that happen!  Please forward this alert to family, friends and sportsmen throughout California because it is going to take a united effort to stop this egregious and deeply flawed legislation.  Contact information for the members of the Senate Public Safety Committee is provided below.

This week, the state Senate passed an omnibus Right-to-Carry reform bill, House Bill 937.  However, the North Carolina Sheriffs' Association is aggressively working to remove the section from H 937 that repeals the antiquated permit to purchase a handgun requirement.  It is critical that the pro-gun community works to counter this effort by taking the following steps:

As recently reported, the State Legislature passed and Governor Phil Bryant (R) signed into law several pro-Second Amendment bills this session, including House Bill 2 by state Representative Andy Gipson (R-Braxton) and state Senator Giles Ward (R-Louisville).  This new law makes critical changes to the state's gun carry laws.  A July 2012 opinion issued by state Attorney General Jim Hood (D) determined that it was unlawful under existing statutes for anyone to a carry holstered, partially-visible pistol on their person. 

On Tuesday, June 18, the state House Policy and Legislative Committee will consider House Bill 203, a measure that seeks to make common sense improvements to Ohio’s current concealed carry and self-defense laws.

Today at the Barre Fish and Game Club, Governor Peter Shumlin (D) ceremonially signed into law the Sportsmen’s Act of 2013, House Bill 101.  As amended by the state House Fish, Wildlife & Water Resources Committee, this new law will allow Vermonters to carry a handgun for self-defense while bow hunting or dog training, provided that game is not be harvested with the pistol during archery season.  This law will take effect on July 1, and strengthens bow hunters and dog trainers inherent right to self-defense while afield.  

After an unusual and embarrassing series of events transpired in the Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee last week, Democrat Leadership simply stopped a failing roll call vote in progress, pulled the bill from committee and assigned it to another committee where the outcome is most likely pre-determined.  This disgraceful attack on gun owners demonstrates just how ruthless and desperate anti-gun lawmakers are in the Garden State. 

The Maine Senate will decide the fate of LD 1240, legislation that attacks private firearm transfers, loans and sales, as early as today.

In April, the Senate voted on, and rejected, the Obama Administration's gun control agenda.  The administration was attempting to ban an ever-lengthening list of semi-automatic firearms, magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, and to expand background check requirements to require government permission for many transfers of firearms among private citizens. The underlying bill Obama wanted to see pass was S. 649, by Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the "universal background checks" provisions of which came from Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).  Because Schumer's legislation was too severe to have any chance of passage, Senators Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), along with Schumer, proposed a compromise amendment in the hope of winning additional votes. However, the amendment was riddled with pitfalls for gun owners, and even some potentially pro-gun provisions added to sweeten the pot were flawed. The amendment fell four votes short of the 60 that were required for passage under a rule the Senate adopted to avoid a filibuster. (Click here to see how your senators voted.)

We've been reporting very regularly on ridiculous cases involving over-zealous school officials misinterpreting and wrongly enforcing "zero-tolerance" rules. In March, we reported on an outrageous case of a seven-year-old Baltimore, Md. student who, according to a March 2, Daily Caller article, was suspended for two days for the nefarious act of shaping a breakfast pastry into what his teacher thought looked like a gun.  Yes, a breakfast pastry. According to the young student, he was eating the strawberry pastry during snack time and was biting off pieces in an attempt to shape it into a mountain.  Apparently, the teacher thought the student's handiwork instead looked like a gun, and escorted him to the principal's office for prompt disciplinary action.

This week, we stumbled upon The Way of the Gun: Estimating Firearms Traffic Across the U.S.-Mexico Border, one of the strangest and most half-asked gun control-related "studies" to come down the sendero in a long time. It contends that a quarter of a million firearms are smuggled from the U.S. to Mexico annually--a figure far in excess of estimates offered by the BATFE, the GAO, and Mexican law enforcement officials--and that 47 percent of firearm dealers in the U.S. would go out of business if they were unable to sell guns intended to be smuggled across the border. And, it proposes several actions for our federal or state governments to take, without explaining why. First, the study--and in this instance we're using the term as loosely as the English language will allow--says that laws on our side of the border should require public disclosure of local gun purchase statistics. But in any jurisdiction, all or almost all firearms purchased have nothing to do with smuggling or Mexico. If you're looking for a needle in a haystack, why add hay? Furthermore, most firearm-related murders in Mexico are committed with handguns and, though the handguns used in such murders do not necessarily originate in the U.S., FFLs are already required to notify the BATFE whenever a customer acquires more than one handgun within a 5-day period.

Yesterday marked a victory for Second Amendment rights and a defeat for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in Nevada as Governor Brian Sandoval vetoed SB 221, an aggressive New York-style expanded background check bill which would impose unreasonable burdens and fees on law-abiding citizens while failing miserably to protect Nevada communities and putting violent criminals behind bars. In an extraordinary grassroots effort, thousands of concerned Nevadans called their representatives and Governor Sandoval's office in Carson City to oppose this legislation and remind those lawmakers that their duty is to protect our rights. The NRA and our members in Nevada thank Governor Sandoval for standing on principle and vetoing this extreme anti-gun bill.

A man entered a game room and tobacco store in East Fort Worth, Texas, pretended to play a game and then drew a gun on a clerk and demanded cash. The clerk complied with the demand, but a second clerk, who had overheard the robbery from another part of the store, retrieved a shotgun and fired at the criminal, striking him in the knee and head, and ending the robbery. When police arrived, the armed robber was taken to a local hospital, with police planning to charge him with aggravated robbery once he has recovered. Local media has reported that the armed clerk will not face charges. 

Democratic leaders in Congress and the White House renewed their push for gun legislation on Thursday, just months after it was defeated in the Senate, amid delicate talks on a new background check measure that advocates hope could change enough votes from no to yes.

In his veto message, Sandoval said the universal background checks provision "imposes unreasonable burdens and harsh penalties upon law abiding Nevadans, while doing little to prevent criminals from unlawfully obtaining firearms."