Senator M. Michael Rounds wants more people to bring guns to school, and he’s lying about it.
Yesterday Senator Rounds announced that he wants to change the Gun-Free School Zones Act to allow South Dakotans carrying concealed weapons to ignore that federal law. Lie #1 is referring to hiding a pistol in your pants as “Constitutional carry,” a slick marketing term not supported by case law and historical reading of the Second Amendment. Lie #2 is that Rounds’s proposal somehow would “close a loophole” in the Gun-Free School Zones Act:
U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) today introduced the Constitutional Carry States’ Rights Act that would close a loophole in the Gun-Free School Zones Act to give law-abiding citizens in states with Constitutional carry laws the same legal authority to possess a firearm as individuals in states that require a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
…Enacted in 1990, the Gun-Free School Zones Act makes it a federal crime to possess a firearm within 1000 feet of a school zone, with exceptions for law enforcement, school-sanctioned activities and individuals licensed by the state to possess a firearm, such as an individual with a concealed carry permit. Current federal law only makes exceptions if the individual is “licensed to do so by the State in which the school zone is located.” The state must also verify the individual is eligible prior to issuing a license. Because of this specific requirement of state licensure, lawful individuals in states with Constitutional carry laws are not included in the exemption because they are able to carry without a specific state permit [Senator Marion Michael Rounds, press release, as posted without correction by KELO Radio, 2019.05.16].
Rounds doesn’t close a loophole; he creates a loophole, a big honking loophole.
The federal law is clear: you can’t take a firearm to school unless you are licensed to carry one and your local law enforcement officials have checked to make sure you can legally pack heat. The fact that South Dakota and several other states have gotten rid of permit requirements for hiding pistols in your pants does not and should change the federal intent that the only people we will tolerate putting kids at risk by bringing guns around school are folks whom we’ve checked out and have on record as licensed firearms users.
Rounds’s bill perverts that exception into a glaring loophole that allows South Dakotans to say, “Ha ha! We let everyone carry concealed weapons without a permit, so we can carry our guns into your school zones in any state in the Union!”
Wantonly wielding pistols around school kids is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind. It’s a loopy effort to allows states to effectively repeal a federal law meant to reduce the risk of kids being shot to death.
Meanwhile, the Senate appears unwilling to take up any measures to make elections more secure. Evidently Senator Rounds is done trying to solve real problems and will spend the rest of his time in Washington helping cowards and compensators cover up their inadequacies with culture-war theater.
The Gun Free School Zone Act was passed into law in 1990. The Act was declared Unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Lopez dcesion. The AG then moved to modify the GFSZA to make it more constitutionally correct. The new law has not been challenged.
A 1000 foot Gun Free Zone (with exceptions) was placed around all public, private and religious schools. This was serious gun control. We have found this law to be an abject failure because it has done little or nothing to quell all the school shootings since the enactment.
The law also places honest people in legal jeopardy as they drive down the street if they come within 1000 feet of a school. The question of the ‘home school’ (private school under the law) also comes into play and an honest person with a lawful CCW and weapon in her purse, or in a car, shoulder or hip holster could be in technical violation of the law.
A vigil to honor those killed and injured in the most recent school shooting in Colorado was organized by the group ‘Enough’. Members of the Colorado political class were invited and began talking about Gun Control. Students walked out of the vigil not wanting their classmates to be used as political pawns, many shouted the need for focus on Mental Health. Members of the media were astounded. Students retirned to honor and remember their classmates after the politicians left.
We now see armed officers or security in school. Some teachers are being armed. Some college campuses are permitting students with their CCW to be armed on campus. Many commercial venues have removed the Gun Free signs from their property.
This seems to be an attempt to close some of the deficiencies in this sweeping but less than effective legislation to protect the innocent and lawful person and might be necessary.
T. Camp: “We have found this law to be an abject failure because it has done little or nothing to quell all the school shootings since the enactment.”
How did “we” come to that conclusion? How do we measure the number of incidents avoided by removing access to guns on or near campuses?
The “good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns” myth remains a false narrative of you and your fellow right-wing extremists. In fact, the only statistical evidence on point shows that increasing the number of guns in any region increased the gun violence in that region.
We hire, train and pay police to protect us citizens from goofy ammosexuals and their gun fetishes.
If you just have to pretend to be Dirty Harry Rambo, get into your closet where no one can see you make a fool cadaver of yourself and leave the rest of us alone.
Ha. Rounds’ pr attempt on guns is a sure-to-not-pass bill that focuses on a new idea for killing more kids. You notice these pocket pistol guys refuse to open up the Capitol area and White House to “constitutional carry.” Come on, M. Mikey, put that bill in. That’s where we need protection.
O: Thanks for the post. ‘We’ only need to look at all the school shootings since the law was passed. ‘I’ recall then Senator Joe Biden who crafted the present law standing before us proclaiming this act would keep school children safe. It has not. One school shooting is unacceptable.
I mentioned nothing about ‘good guys with guns’ however, I did state a fact about officers and armed security in schools. Keep in mind that many academics who operate our schools as administrators or on Boards of Educarion are liberals or progressive in various degrees as a general rule. They were the ones to made this decision.
I did not resort to name calling as you did with the ‘right wing extremist’ label. There are a lot of strong and solid hard core Democrats, many of whom are women with CCW permits.
Perhaps the young students who walked away from the politicians talking about more gun control had the right idea when many shouted the need for more mental health focus.
SD gun laws are amazing. I may have missed a statute that controls, but from what I can see, here are some of the results from repealing the concealed carry laws:
– I saw no statute that prohibited kids under 18 from carrying any legal type of gun, other than a pistol. This means that kids younger than 18 do not have to obtain a permit to lawfully conceal in a backpack, or otherwise hide, AR-15’s or other semi-automatic military style killing machines and bring them anywhere that weapons are not otherwise prohibited such as public streets, music and summer festivals, movie theaters, skating rinks, summer camps, scout meetings, churches, shopping centers, etc, etc.
– a soon as a child turns 18 he or she also can also carry a hidden semi-automatic pistol in his or her backpack.
http://sdlegislature.gov/Statutes/Codified_Laws/DisplayStatute.aspx?Type=Statute&Statute=23-7-44
Do you feel safer knowing that an undiagnosed depressed, suicidal or homicidal child can legally stash an AR-15 type weapon, or if 18 years old a pistol, in a backpack and take it most anywhere you and your family might want to go to enjoy a day?
Thankfully, but strangely enough, even if Rounds gets his bill passed, South Dakota law still seems to prohibit the general public from carrying guns, concealed or open,
https://sdlegislature.gov/Statutes/Codified_Laws/DisplayStatute.aspx?Type=Statute&Statute=13-32-7
Perhaps the “good?” news for Rounds and his supporters, however, is that this prohibition does not apply to concealed or open carry at “non-public” or church schools. Doesn’t this make you want to send junior to a private school or church? I guess Betsy DeVos would be happy since our kids could use their secret AR-15’s to fend off Grizzly bears in private schools.
I had to chuckle when I read T.Camp’s statement that
as his justification for the claim that
Using that rationale, I guess we could just as correctly say that laws against murder, theft, rape, assault, among others crimes are “abject failures” because ‘We’ only need to look at all the murders, thefts, rapes, assaults, among others crimes that have been committed since these laws were passed.
I think the same argument has been made about laws addressing poverty, among other social problems, – since such laws have never completely eradicated all poverty they are failures in the minds of those seeking to repeal all such laws. I am constantly surprised that the obvious absurdity of such an argument evades the minds of so many folks.
T. Camp, no, I am not at all buying your “I’m one of you — who just happens to hold opinions abjectly opposite of yours.” I am glad you have your own opinions. I respect your opinions are different to mine. I reject your wolf in sheep’s clothing – one of you – gaslighting.
Guns cause gun violence. The students who walked out of the vigil did so because it shifted to a political tone and away from a pure remembrance of their lost friends.
This incident serves to remind what happens when open carry behavior becomes normalized:
https://www.alternet.org/2015/11/colorado-man-goes-murderous-rampage-after-911-dispatcher-lectures-panicked-caller/
“Honest” people who can’t take the time to be mindful of their firearms and not bring them around schools, where they jeopardize children and violate federal law, need to be honest with themselves about their irresponsible gun behavior and consider not carrying guns at all.
Post-secondary institutions are gun-free zones, and they have much lower suicide and homicide rates than many other places.
As for “all the school shootings since the law was passed,” school shootings have declined since the 1990s:
One thus cannot claim that making schools gun-free zones somehow increased shootings at school. If anyone tries to confuse correlation with causation, they’ll have to look at the implementation of gun-free ones around schools in the 1990s, the subsequent decline in shootings at schools, and adopt the opposite (albeit equally fallacious) conclusion what what T. Camp casually posits above.
“academics who operate our schools as administrators or on Boards of Educarion are liberals or progressive in various degrees” [sic]
no, tc. oh, and no name-calling, right?
M Mikee has shown his true “colors “.
Remember the more guns or the bigger
the guns the smaller the male genitalia.
It’s concerning the “solution” to school shootings is “open” gun laws and allow more
Carry into no gun zones.
Rounds has serious serious serious issues in
His state with grain prices and ag issues
Yet we continue to talk about guns and abortion
Go figure
Fewer guns leads to fewer shootings in every nation of the world, except a few that are at war. But apparently, for the ammosexuals, that’s not so for the USA.
Psychologists have a term for people who believe that what applies to everyone else does not apply to them. Ammosexuals are “terminally unique.”