Legislation passed in Kansas last week is a good first step toward bringing the gun rights of Sunflower State residents into the 21st Century, according to the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA).
The legislation contains a new section that pre-empts local gun ordinances, so that all firearms regulation will be uniform, from one end of the state to the other. Gun control extremists have lashed out at the bill, contending that it prevents Kansas communities from passing their own gun laws.
“Governor Kathleen Sebelius should sign this common sense legislation,” said CCRKBA Executive Director Joe Waldron, “in the interest of protecting state residents and visitors from the confusion that invariably results from patchwork gun laws that may change from one city to the next. Such laws work perfectly in other states, and there is no reason that the same kind of law won’t work here.”
“I find it amusing, curious and the zenith of hypocrisy,” Waldron continued, “for certain anti-gun zealots to suddenly be out front defending the concept of local gun laws, when for years, they campaigned for national gun control laws, including waiting periods, background checks and outright bans. Now that those strategies have failed, and studies reveal that such laws have had questionable results, suddenly these same extremists are defending the concept of local control. They are not interested in public safety, but only in passing laws that are confusing and designed primarily to trap law-abiding citizens.
“The leading proponent of this foolishness is the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence,” Waldron noted. “It would be more appropriate if this group were called the Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership, because that’s been their ultimate goal. Their present strategy is to disguise their intent in a masquerade about local control. We think Kansas citizens and their state lawmakers are smart enough to see through this flimsy sham.
“State pre-emption laws,” Waldron explained, “eliminate the potential of citizens being victimized by conflicting local ordinances that may allow something in one jurisdiction, and prohibit the same thing in a neighboring jurisdiction. All one has to do to become a criminal under such a scenario is to simply cross an invisible line from one place to another. That kind of confusion is eliminated by state pre-emption, and we believe the law-abiding citizens of Kansas deserve that kind of legislative protection.”