Police Chiefs Lobby Group Campaigns Against National Reciprocity
BY Herschel Smith
6 years, 7 months ago
The International Association of Chiefs of Police on Thursday made public a letter directed at Congressional leaders voicing the group’s opposition to the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act pending in Washington. The measures, H.R. 38 and S.446, respectively, would expand carry rights nationwide, in effect forcing states and local jurisdictions to respect all valid concealed carry permits, a move the letter’s signatories feel is a mistake.
“Mandated reciprocity would effectively override the permitting requirements of individual states, such as requiring safety training or prohibiting permits for people with multiple convictions for violent misdemeanors or drug or alcohol abuse problems,” the letter says in part.
Though made up of some 30,000 members, just 473 individuals from 39 states elected to lend their name to the letter. There are no active police chiefs who signed the letter from such conservative bulwark states as Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico or Nevada. In comparison, states with strict gun laws had numerous chiefs support the declaration. For instance, at least 85 signers were from Massachusetts departments and 55 from New York.
“This bill would override state laws determining who is qualified to carry a loaded hidden gun – laws which take into account the unique circumstances and needs in each state– and would force states to allow individuals to carry guns who are not qualified to do so under their own laws,” said Boston Police Commissioner William Evans in a statement issued by the IACP. “During traffic stops and other interactions with the public, our officers would have to be familiar with 50 different state’s laws on concealed carry permitting. Given the split-second decisions our officers frequently need to make, this is nearly impossible and can foreseeably lead to violent confrontations.”
That’s a blatant lie and they know it. They know in the deepest recesses of their hearts that gun carriers are even safer than they are, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with crime.
They don’t want people to be able to effect their God-given duty of self defense except themselves. This is the pinnacle of wickedness. Every single person who lent their support for this lobbying effort is a liar and desires to see the deaths of innocent people, plain and simple.
Still, I’m with reader Fred Tippens on this issue. Getting the FedGov involved in national carry laws is a profoundly had idea. Let’s hope and pray that all states that oppose the right of self defense simply go bankrupt, and work towards that end.
On April 20, 2018 at 8:26 pm, Ned said:
“Mandated reciprocity would effectively override the permitting requirements of individual states, such as … prohibiting permits for people with multiple convictions for violent misdemeanors or drug or alcohol abuse problems,” the letter says in part.
Surely these lying assnecks have actually seen a form 4473. Thus their lies amount to diaphanous virtue signalling meant solely to convince their own special kind of moron that the above is actually a problem.
On April 21, 2018 at 7:33 am, Sean said:
“”Given the split-second decisions our officers frequently need to make, this is nearly impossible and can foreseeably lead to violent confrontations.””
The chance that the permitted mundane would initiate the ‘violent confrontations’ is at, or near ZERO.
Wish we could say the same of the cops.
On April 21, 2018 at 3:16 pm, dad29 said:
The (short) list of Wisconsin signatories is interesting. The UW-Madison cop-ette is no surprise to anyone. The other three have departments which are microscopic in size.
What is surprising is that the chiefs of the Cities of Madison and Milwaukee did not sign on. That tells you that they regard the petition as silly.
On April 21, 2018 at 5:54 pm, H said:
Emphasis added. Note this is the infamous organization that represents a lot of police chiefs from outright police states, they’ve been viciously anti-gun for decades.
On April 22, 2018 at 8:30 am, Chris said:
No, the federal level is exactly the level to do it. Not by an act of Congress, but by the Supreme Court finally recognizing that “bearing arms” is one of the “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” and no state shall make or enforce any laws which abridge them. (14th amendment)
On April 22, 2018 at 10:39 am, H said:
Chris: the “privileges or immunities” part of the 14th Amendment is stone cold dead, refusing to enforce it was how the Supreme Court initially nullified the 14th, like in the 1873 Slaughter-House Cases. Much later, parts of the rest of the Constitution and the Bill of Right have been “selectively incorporated” and enforced against the states, but as the name implied, that’s done on a case by case basis. Alan Gura even offered the Supreme Court the “extreme option” of doing a “privileges or immunities” ruling in McDonald, but not wanting to relitigate decades of decisions, they declined and went for the usual method.
As it is, even before Gorsuch’s recent illegal alien ruling showed he is “growing in office”, the Supreme Court has been refusing to hear appeals for every firearms 2nd Amendment case after McDonald, even to the point of reversing on one of Heller’s most important findings, that the government couldn’t make it effectively illegal to defend yourself with a gun inside your home (the San Francisco “Lock Up Your Safety” law). As of now, you live in Illinois or maybe D.C., the 2nd Amendment simply does not exist.
On April 22, 2018 at 3:31 pm, Pat Hines said:
All of the states with which I’m interested in traveling within I have reciprocity now, all are southern states.
I don’t care if I have reciprocity with New York, California, and all those other communist dominated states, they can sink into third world oblivion as far as I’m concerned.
The time and wealth campaigning for national reciprocity has, in my opinion, been wasted. That wealth and time would have been better spent on NFA and GCA repeal. Let’s, all of us, prioritize our goals. National reciprocity was a mistake.
On April 22, 2018 at 8:48 pm, Fred said:
Yeah, GOA has hitched their entire policy drive to the wagon of reciprocity. I think that they will regret it. I know that I regret that decision by them. I’m certain that national initiatives at the DC level will never be as effective as fighting this battle One New Shooter At A Time.
Marijuana dealers are doing a better job of expanding rights then gun owners, one new pot head at a time.
On April 23, 2018 at 8:57 am, H said:
Fred: If they care about liberalizations at the national level, it’s that or removing suppressors from the NFA as the current big causes, right? That a nominally Republican President and a Congress of his party are giving us more gun control in his first couple of year, when in the mirror situation Obama and a Democratic Congress gave us concealed carry in National Parks and carriage of guns in checked baggage on Amtrak isn’t exactly GOA’s fault.
They along with many others tried for these liberalizations, only to see them ignored in the Senate, and in the case of reciprocity Trump said FixNICS wouldn’t pass with it, which was by then obviously correct. Do you have any suggestions for they should have done instead?
On April 23, 2018 at 9:46 am, Fred said:
H,
I hold no ill will toward the GOA. Let’s be clear about that. The NRA on the other hand are traitors to the constitution, always have been.
I do care about liberalizations at the national level. Reciprocity however, is not liberalization. National Reciprocity is asking for the control of firearms for the purposes of self-defense across state lines. It’s national gun control. It’s asking for the federal government to regulate the wearing of arms for the purpose of going armed.
It’s compromise. It admits that a license is valid. It’s a credentialed press and a 501(c)3 church. It’s a violation of civil rights.
In it, just under the surface, is a bureaucratic licensing and insurance scheme that only woodrow wilson could love.
It’s either a way to fleece money from you or to control you. With this, government gets a twofer.
Who stands to profit? Always ask yourself that. It’s one more reason to distrust the NRA. They didn’t start selling conceal carry insurance in a vacuum. Like cars and driving, insurance would shortly be required and low and behold, how handy dandy, the NRA just happens to have recently gone into the insurance biz.
The NRA learned this from the AARP. The AARP started selling insurance to old people that just happened to fill the exact gap created by the next Medicaid bill.
Understand the history of motor vehicle registration and driver licensing and ask yourself; ‘By what right does another man determine the manner in which I transport my body from one point to another?’ Now apply that to firearms. Can you own any car you want? Can you build your own and still drive it within your own state but not cross state lines? No and no. Why not? We simply have national reciprocity of drivers licenses and car plates don’t we? The gun itself will become the object of forced national level compliance through regulation and insurance costs.
And weirdly, I thought that the left would support National Reciprocity and that the right should be against it but this is the state of critical thinking in America today.
It’s an unwise route.