Oklahoma – -(Ammoland.com)- Oklahoma House leadership continues to stand against gun owners’ rights by refusing to allow two important amendments to be heard on the House floor.
OK2A has plans to add amendments to two bills: one with Car Carry, which would allow anyone who is not a felon to carry a handgun in their car without a permit (several states already allow this) and another with our SDA license overhaul bill that was killed earlier during the session by Representative Ortega. Mr. Ortega continues to stand with those who favor gun control. That’s right. Representative Ortega has sided with gun control advocates by refusing to allow these amendments to be heard.
Legislative Update: The Back Story
The leadership in the House this year has been a major disappointment. Last year, Speaker Hickman was instrumental in helping several pro-gun bills get through the House. This year has been a much different story.
Speaker Hickman has remained silent, allowing Floor Leader Ortega to stall and kill good pro gun, pro constitutional, pro liberty legislation.
We’ve already covered the excuses OSBI has used to oppose the SDA Overhaul amendment (see Action Alert: OSBI Lobbies Against Gun Rights). In the amendment, we made one concession – the price was bumped up to $40. That still saves gun owners $85, but also means OSBI will actually make more per license than they currently do ($1.7 million more a year). Even in the midst of a budget shortfall, this was not enough to get gun grabbers like Rep. Ortega to go for it.
Speaker Hickman has also remained silent while a turncoat committee chairman, Representative Christian, has done Higher Ed’s bidding by killing almost every meaningful gun bill that would actually advance gun owner’s rights.
Mike Christian used to be one of the pro gun stalwarts in the House. What caused him to make such a sudden and dramatic change in philosophy? I don’t know.
But I do know that last year he supported OK2A’s proposed amendment to the state constitution at the beginning of the session (he even signed on to it as a co-author) only to block its advancement at the eleventh hour because of a promise he made to disgraced higher ed lobbyist, Chad Alexander.
I also know that this year he has constantly voiced concern over a phrase in the Car Carry amendment:
“Any citizen twenty-one (21) years of age or older, except a convicted felon, may transport a pistol concealed or unconcealed, loaded or unloaded without a valid handgun license…”
Our current state constitution uses the word citizen, so this legislation is in keeping with current constitutional language. So, what was his concern? That illegal aliens might be able to carry a pistol in their car. What part of citizen is so hard to understand? Now, I don’t believe that Representative Christian is not smart enough to understand that citizen means citizen. He is simply stalling and trying to come up with excuses to stop the language that he previously agreed to allow.
This is the same Representative Christian who accused the NRA representative of committing a felony simply for warning him that his refusal to hear gun bills might cause his NRA score to suffer. He went so far as to attempt to have District Attorney David Prater prosecute her under the same statute that he used to prosecut Al Geheart. Let me repeat that another way: Rep. Christian tried to have a lobbyist prosecuted for doing what every lobbyist at the State Capitol does on a regular basis. This was all apparently done with House leadership’s blessing, if not out right participation.
Now, they have successfully shut the NRA out. The NRA representative has not been back in Oklahoma since. Christian, Ortega, et al., think they’ve won.
It’s up to us – gun owners in Oklahoma – to make sure they hear our voice. They may have run the NRA back to Virginia, but we live here. OK2A is not going away!
About Oklahoma Second Amendment Association
OK2A seeks to defend our Second Amendment rights and remove the infringements placed on it by our government. Visit: www.ok2a.org