The LuLac Edition #4,222, February 12h, 2020

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

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This week’s Write On Wednesday concerns the sale of guns, the re-sale and ordinances on firearms.This is from the Times-Shamrock editorial pages.

END SECOND AMENDMENT SANCTUARIES

Over the past decade, gun rights absolutists have prevailed upon their acolytes in the state Legislature to put the hammer to local governments that dare act in the cause of public safety.
After a series of state courts upheld local ordinances requiring gun owners to report to police the loss or theft of their weapons, enough legislators dutifully rolled over for the gun lobbyists to cow the local governments into submission.
The ordinances were in response to a common problem. Some people legally buy guns and then illegally sell them to people who cannot legally buy firearms themselves, usually due to criminal records. Then, when the weapons are used in crimes, the original owners tell investigators that the guns had been lost or stolen.
In upholding the ordinances, the courts found that the gun advocacy groups that sued could not demonstrate that they had suffered any harm and, therefore, had no standing to sue.
The Legislature shamefully responded by not only conferring such standing upon the absolutists, but requiring local governments to pay the gun advocates’ legal fees.
And, lawmakers held that no local government may adopt a gun-related ordinance that conflicts with state law.
Now, however, many of the same advocates and legislators who railed against local gun ordinances are behind a movement to establish “Second Amendment sanctuaries.” Such enclaves — municipalities or other political subdivisions — would refuse to enforce any state law that they perceive to diminish gun ownership rights in any way.
They would refuse, for example, to enforce a new state law that would enable a court, with full due process, to order the removal of firearms from someone involved in a domestic dispute. An extension of that law, which would allow a court to order guns to be removed from someone found to be a danger to himself or others, is under consideration. Or, such jurisdictions would ignore a state law to report lost or stolen guns, if one is adopted. The list is endless.
State lawmakers, who regularly have expressed their disdain for local gun-related laws, should act decisively to strike down the absurdity of Second Amendment sanctuaries.