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CAMPUS CARRY 2015: RIP
By Chuck Muth
May 31, 2015
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Greg Brower did on
Saturday what everyone living in reality knew he would do: kill the “new” campus carry bill once and for all.
We can all thank Assemblyman Jim Wheeler for blinking when it got too hot in the kitchen.
In reflecting on this sad fate for an extremely important
bill, I looked up the term “useful idiot” on Wikipedia this morning. It’s defined thusly…
The cause in this case was killing “Amanda’s Law” – legislation
that would allow concealed carry permit holders to carry their weapons with
them for self-defense on college campuses.
And because I like Jim Wheeler personally, it really pains
me that he allowed himself to be used so effectively and totally by the
anti-gun propagandists
Wheeler, you’ll recall, led the Not-So-Great-Eight into a
foolish act of cowardice when they stood with Assembly Democrats and killed an
effort to attach the campus carry measure as an amendment to another gun bill
sought by Senate Majority Leader Michael
Roberson.
We can also thank the California-based lobbyist for the
National Rifle Association, Dan Reid,
for standing on the sidelines and not only watching campus carry die, but
cheering on Wheeler and the Not-So-Great-Eight.
Nevada needs and deserves its own NRA lobbyist. Mr. Reid should now be banned from the
offices of the Assembly GOP members who stood tall and didn’t back down from
this fight when the going got tough.
The Nevada Firearms Coalition was also complicit, but I don’t
blame them so much.
They’re a relatively new organization and have done some GREAT
things for gun owners and gun rights in Nevada.
Don Turner and Randy Mackie are aces, and gun owners
and gun rights supporters are lucky to have them in Nevada.
The truth is, this was just NVFAC’s second legislative
session. The group made a tactical mistake
by going after Assembly Judiciary Chairman Ira
Hansen and trying to make him out to be the bad guy on the amendment
vote. I’m guessing they won’t fall for
it again in the future.
Instead, I blame their lobbyist, Megan Bedera, who clearly misled the organization strategically.
NVFAC needs to hire someone with a little more political
savvy and lot more backbone; someone who understands that there are a lot more
people in Nevada who support gun rights than just members of NVFAC.
But back to Wheeler, who really screwed the pooch on this
one.
About a month before the start of the session, Wheeler went
native. Got a taste of being on the
legislative leadership team…and liked it!
Fancied himself a “player.” Got
to sit at the cool kids’ table. Strutted
around like a true BMOC…big man on campus.
Lord, it’s hard to be humble…when you’re perfect in ev-er-y
way.
Indeed, Wheeler quickly turned his back on his conservative
allies and started wheeling and dealing and playing footsies with the very GOP
establishment folks who tried to bury him politically last year after he told
the world he’d vote for slavery if that’s what his constituents wanted.
His new BFF’s whispered sweet nothings in his ear, stroked
his ego, told him how great he was, how he was “da man” and should be calling
the shots in the Republican Assembly Caucus.
And Jimbo bought it…hook, line and sinker.
Wanna know just how badly Mr. Wheeler got played? Consider this…
After outrage directed at him erupted after he led the
Not-So-Great-Eight in killing the ONLY real opportunity to pass campus
carry this session, Mr. Wheeler panicked and begged Speaker-of-the-Weak John Hambrick to give him an “emergency”
bill to put campus carry back in play before the end of the session.
A fool’s errand. So
Hambrick gave him the rope to hang himself with.
And while at least two of the Not-So-Great-Eight –
Assemblyman Paul Anderson and
Assemblyman Chris Edwards – boasted
in emails to angry constituents and in news interviews that the new bill would
sail through the Senate – we all knew it was a pipe dream.
But remember what Wheeler himself wrote in a tweet to me…
A “hearing”? That’s
it?
That’s like Jack selling his cow for that bag of magic
beans.
In the end, the cool kids didn’t even give Jim Wheeler the
courtesy of that harmless hearing, let alone a vote.
That’s how little regard they really have for him.
They played him like a fiddle.
And campus carry now has the stake driven through its heart
for this session.
Demonstrating once again that Republicans never blow an
opportunity to blow an opportunity.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“At the time of my attack (in the parking garage at the
University of Nevada Reno) I had obtained my concealed carry weapons permit,
unfortunately I didn’t have my firearm with me that night because it was and is
still illegal to carry a weapon on
university campuses across most states in our country. The current law
effectively legislated me into being a victim by stripping me of the equalizer
I choose to use to defend my body and my life.
Had I been carrying my weapon that night, I would have been able to stop
my attack in progress and as a result two other rapes would have been prevented
and a young life would have been saved.
“It is not a matter of IF the next James Biela will come
onto a University Campus it is a reality of when the next James Biela will be
caught. Every year 3,000 rapes are
REPORTED on our University campuses, so many more go unreported. It is my goal to get Amanda’s Law passed in
every stated across the USA. Our safety
is our choice and we should not be mandated to hand that over to a third party
due to an arbitrary line. Amanda’s Law
will allow law abiding women and men to carry their permitted concealed weapon
on University Campuses.”
- Rape survivor Amanda Collins
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