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Dusty Johnson Wants to Recognize Tribal ID Cards for Gun Sales

Congressman Dusty Johnson hasn’t endorsed any legislation to restore the successful universal school-meal funding that our great and rich country implemented during the coronavirus pandemic. But he is working to help our Indian brothers and sisters get guns:

Today, U.S. Representative Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) introduced the bipartisan Tribal Firearm Access Actwith Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) to protect tribal sovereignty and list tribal governments as eligible entities to issue identification documents for the purposes of transferring a firearm. U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) introduced the companion bill in the Senate.

“Classifying tribal IDs as an invalid form of identification for the purchase of firearms limits tribal sovereignty and tribal members’ ability to obtain a firearm,” said Johnson. “A foreign passport is accepted as a valid form of identification—a tribal ID should be no different. My bill corrects this oversight, ensuring Second Amendment rights for tribal members.”

“The right to bear arms is constitutionally vested, and important to the day-to-day lives of Native Americans. The Tribal Firearm Access Act sponsored by Rep. Dusty Johnson removes certain barriers for tribal members to purchase firearms by allowing them to utilize tribally issued identification cards as a valid form of identification. I applaud Rep. Johnson’s continued efforts to protect tribal members’ rights, and appreciate this legislation,” said President Tony Reider, Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe [Congressman Dusty Johnson, press release, 2023.03.22].

We should applaud Johnson’s effort to expand equal recognition of tribal ID cards. But if he can’t prioritize universal school-lunch funding, maybe he could at least advocate a universal youth hunting season, so all kids, Indian and otherwise, can go out and shoot their own food (but remember, ammunition isn’t free, either).

7 Comments

  1. larry kurtz 2023-03-23 06:49

    Every federal department and agency already recognizes Native America as the 51st State so progress toward resolutions of Native trust disputes would have far more political traction after tribes secede from the States in which they reside and then be ratified to form one State, the 51st, sans contiguous borders with two US Senators and three House members as there are an estimated 2.5 million Indigenous Americans living on reservations.

  2. larry kurtz 2023-03-23 09:34

    So, not running someone, anyone, against Republican At-large US Representative Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson in 2020 and again in 2022 are more embarrassments for the South Dakota Democratic Party who hasn’t won a statewide race since 2008.

    Johnson has never stopped raising money so the SDDP needs to hound the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for cash and start running opposition ads on every commercial radio station in South Dakota. My party can recruit some respected Democrats to record radio spots then bombard the airwaves paving the way to 2024.

    Johnson needs to be held accountable for coddling a would be dictator and building a war chest on the Big Lie, for his failures to support Medicaid, for voting against marriage, for not moving on immigration reform and for his culpability in driving talent from South Dakota. But he certainly knows which side of his bread gets buttered so the extreme white wing of the Republican Party owns him lock, stock and schlock. Johnson went from being a likable moderate to becoming just another tool of the oligarchs who hoard trillions in South Dakota’s banks and trusts because, hey, that’s where the money is.

    When a handful of Republicans need socialized freight rail to ship subsidized grain Howdy Doody Dusty is all aboard but when thousands need passenger rail he’s ambivalent then votes against the Earth and for the Trump agenda without remorse. He wasn’t duped by Maria Butina, he was an accomplice.

    So, the SDDP needs to find the money and hire muckrakers like the Governor’s Club did to beat Tom Daschle and put Kristi Noem in office.

  3. Mark Anderson 2023-03-23 10:26

    Gee, arming Native American’s. Sounds good to me but I’m just a Palomino.

  4. All Mammal 2023-03-23 10:44

    Start out actually helping by permitting tribal IDs as legal form of identification to rent a freaking motel room in Rapid City. That’d be a nice move. There’s plenty of assault weapons on the Rez.

  5. bearcreekbat 2023-03-23 11:29

    I go along with All Mammal’s position the recognition of tribal IDs as legal form of identification. While we are at it the State also should be required to recognize tribally issued medical marijuana cards. To paraphrase Representative Johnson:;

    The right of South Dakotans to access medical marijuana is vested by law, initiated and passed by the people of SD, and important to the day-to-day lives of Native American South Dakotans with medical conditions treatable by marijuana.

  6. M 2023-03-23 18:03

    Can one use a tribal ID to vote?

  7. larry kurtz 2023-03-24 07:58

    The United States’ longest war wasn’t in Afghanistan; it was against Indigenous Americans and ran from about 1785 to at least 1973. Leonard Peltier is a prisoner of that war.

    In 1974, President Richard Nixon issued a limited presidential pardon to convicted killer William Calley of My Lai Massacre fame after he and American troops, some under his command, raped and butchered some 500 unarmed Vietnamese people in 1968.

    Leonard Peltier is guilty of far, far lesser offenses.

    After being convicted in 1977 then sentenced to two life terms for being present at the killing of two enemy combatants under the fog of war on a battlefield inside the Oglala Lakota Nation in occupied South Dakota in 1975. Peltier applied for compassionate release in 2018 and again in 2020 but was always denied because Donald Trump despises American Indians.

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