MUTH'S TRUTHS INVESTIGATIONS 05/23/2015

Who Shot Campus Carry? - Part II A Muth’s Truths Investigation By Chuck Muth May 23, 2015 OK, I’m back.  CJ’s basketball team won 25-9.  He had two points, four rebounds and an assist.  He also appears to have tackled every player on the other team at least once…and still didn’t foul out.  Thank goodness for lenient refs! In other news… Here’s a nutshell, bullet-point highlight list from Part I of “Who Shot Campus Carry?”… Assemblywoman Michele Fiore introduced a campus carry bill this session (AB148) which passed easily in the Assembly. The bill went over to the Senate where Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Greg Brower refused to give it a hearing or committee vote, claiming there weren’t enough votes to pass it. REPEAT:  The bill went over to the Senate where Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Greg Brower refused to give it a hearing or committee vote, claiming there weren’t enough votes to pass it. REPEAT, REPEAT: The bill went over to the Senate where Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Greg Brower refused to give it a hearing or committee vote, claiming there weren’t enough votes to pass it. As such, campus carry died its first death of this session. SB175 is a good gun bill in which its sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Michael Roberson “stole” a number of ideas from bills from other legislators and rolled them all into one “omnibus” bill under his name SB175 included a very important provision for gun owners: Pre-emption.  Pre-emption essentially means local government can’t trump gun rights afforded by the State of Nevada of the federal government. SB175 passed in the Senate and was sent over to the Assembly Judiciary Committee for consideration. OK, now you’re caught up. With Fiore’s campus carry bill (AB148) dead in the Senate, supporters of campus carry were left with no choice but to add the campus carry legislation to a bill that had already been passed by the Senate as an amendment. That this became necessary was entirely the fault of Brower, who refused to give AB148 a hearing and a vote, claiming the votes weren’t there to pass it. Again, Brower claimed the votes weren’t there in the Senate to pass campus carry. PLAN B Hansen decided to add the campus carry language to SB175 for a number of reasons, including the fact that it was already a hodge-podge bill of a variety of gun-related issues and because it was a pet bill of Majority Leader Roberson. Now… If campus carry was included in SB175 and sent back to the Senate, the Senate would have had three choices: (a) Approve the bill with campus carry in it, or (b) Kill the bill with campus carry in it, or (c) Approve the bill after stripping out the campus carry provision and sending it back to the Assembly for another vote. Option (a), we were told, was not an option.  Remember, Brower had killed campus carry two weeks ago as a stand-alone bill because, he claimed, the votes weren’t there to pass it. Again, Brower’s claim all along has been that the votes aren’t there in the Senate to pass campus carry regardless of how it is presented – either as a stand-alone bill or an amendment to a bill. Option (b), wasn’t likely to be an option considering how badly the Majority Leader wanted his SB175 to pass. So option (c) was the most likely option the Senate would have gone with.  At that point, the Assembly would have had a tough decision to make on whether or not to approve SB175 with campus carry stripped out (likely) or refuse to take it out and send the bill to a “conference committee” of the two houses to try to hammer out a compromise. In either case, SB175 would NOT have been dead. Now here’s where things get really interesting… PROTECTING PRE-EMPTION Knowing that “pre-emption” was an important issue and high priority for gun rights activists this session, Hansen, wisely, went ahead and added the pre-emption language to another gun bill, SB240, which had already been approved in the Senate by a unanimous 20-0 vote. That way, even if the Senate DID kill SB175, the pre-emption item wouldn’t die with it. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, so let me repeat it. If SB175 was somehow killed, it wouldn’t have killed pre-emption.  Got it? In fact, SB240 was approved - with the pre-emption language added to it - on Thursday, 23-18, with every Republican except, for some unknown reason, Assemblyman Brent Jones voting for it (Assemblyman Randy Kirner was excused). Nevertheless, the Chicken Little Caucus – led by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Nevada Firearms Coalition (NVFAC), for whom pre-emption was a bigger priority than protecting women on campus from rapists and murderers – began squawking hysterically behind the scenes in Carson City that if campus carry was added to SB175, Brower was going to kill it. For reasons already stated, not likely.  But even if he did, pre-emption was in NO JEOPARDY whatsoever, since Hansen had already added it to SB240. So if anyone tries to tell you that SB175 had to be saved at all costs to assure passage of pre-emption, they either (a) don’t know what they’re talking about, or (b) are lying through their teeth. Still with me? All week long, enormous pressure was applied to Hansen in an effort to keep him from adding campus carry to SB175 on the false claim that it would kill SB175 and, thus, pre-emption. As such, a last-minute effort by Assemblymen Jim Wheeler and James Oscarson was reportedly being pursued to add campus carry to SB240 instead of SB175. This was a flawed strategy that failed to take into account the fact that Roberson, the Majority Leader, would be FAR more likely to intervene to save his own SB175 bill than the SB240 bill that he couldn’t care less about. It’s been a while, so let me take this opportunity to remind everyone that Brower has claimed over and over and over again that the votes aren’t there to pass campus carry in the Senate. We now return you to our regularly scheduled program… Another fatal flaw in the SB240 gambit was that those mulling it apparently didn’t bother to discuss the option with either Hansen, the Judiciary Committee chair, or Fiore, the original sponsor of the campus carry bill. Inquiring minds wanna know… Why not? THE NOT-SO-GREAT EIGHT In any event, Hansen attempted to add campus carry as an amendment to SB175 on Thursday – the exact same language that every Republican in the Assembly - except Assemblyman Steven Silberkraus and Assemblywoman Melissa Woodbury, who were absent that day – had already voted for back in April. Woodbury, however, is an original co-sponsor of the bill. One Democrat voted for the new SB175/AB148 combo bill – Assemblyman James Ohrenschall. However, EIGHT Republicans – including six who voted for AB148 previously – stood with the rest of the Democrats and voted AGAINST the amendment to add the exact same campus carry language to the bill. Thus, the Not-So-Great Eight – Assemblymen Wheeler, Oscarson, Woodbury, Silberkraus, Paul Anderson, Derek Armstrong, Lynn Stewart and Chris Edwards - killed campus carry a second time. Their claim was, and continues to be, that they were trying to protect pre-emption which, as I’ve already demonstrated, was in no danger whatsoever even if, after calling Brower’s bluff, he still tried to kill Roberson’s pet gun bill. Anyway, immediately after the public learned about how the Not-So-Great Eight killed campus carry for the second time, all hell broke loose! But… My kids want to go see the new “Poltergeist” movie, and I’m too cheap not to take them to a matinee.  So let me wrap up Part II here, and we’ll pick up on Part III later. But let me give you a little heads up before I go… If this issue is of interest to you, don’t schedule anything for Monday morning at 8:00 a.m.  Whatever unanswered questions remain after Part III will be answered, live, at that time. You will NOT want to miss this. Stand by for details… You can read this column online, as well as access archives of past Muth's Truths columns by clicking here... www.MuthsTruths.com Did someone forward you this copy of Muth's Truths? Get your own FREE subscription...