All by his lonesome from his perch in the Executive Branch. If you are from the States where your CCW was formerly recognized by Virginia, yer outta luck (emphasis mine):
Virginia attorney general Mark Herring (D, in case you were wondering) has announced that he will be severing Virginia’s firearms license reciprocity agreements with a slew of states. Herring, a Tennessee native who now resides in Fairfax County and enthusiastically accepted contributions from anti-gun plutocrat Michael Bloomberg during the election in 2013, apparently wants to do all he can to cut down on the number of Virginians and others who can legally carry a concealed firearm in the Old Dominion. According to the Washington Post, the list of states that have had the agreements severed include . . .
Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
The Corner had something in its post on this that caught my eye – and something that I’ve been blogging about for years:
From what I can tell, this maneuver is legal. Under present law, the state legislature has empowered the attorney general to decide with which states Virginia has reciprocity deals, and the attorney general has taken advantage of that power. If, as seems possible, the legislature disapproves of the AG’s choices, it will have to change the law.
They shoulda done it right in the first place but they got lazy or stupid or both.
This is what can (and has) happen when the Legislative Branch decides to outsource its responsibility to make law to the Executive Branch. In this case, a decision that has wide ramification and should have been codified into law instead was blithely passed off to a political position that can simply, on a whim or a dot of ideology, turn citizens’ lives upside down. That separation of power firewall wasn’t just breached, it was blown apart. As Lenin said “I found power lying in the streets and I simply picked it up”. The Virginia legislature simply left theirs in an unlocked cabinet.
Remember, our whole system of governance is predicated (and I can’t believe I have to keep repeating this but it seems that many are ignorant of it and many politicians are guilty from it) on the idea that the separation of powers means the legislators create law and the executive(s) simply enforce it. However, with the rise of the Progressives, the idea was (and continues to be promulgated) that legislators shouldn’t sweat the details – let the domain “experts” take care of that. Don’t worry, what could go wrong?
Well, bureaucracies always want to grow their size, influence, and power. And here is a case where the power was simply picked up – rather unexpectedly, I bet. For Conservatives, in the aftermath of Obamacare and Frank-Dodd, and the EPA going rogue, the FCC grabbing power it has no authorizing law at ALL, this should be a wake up call.
Stop doing this. If you are a legislator, make sure that ALL the details are in the legislation – leave nothing to chance. Make sure that the time is spent locking it all down right from the get go – do NOT assume anymore that the Executive Branch will just blithely go along with your intent. We’ve seen over the last 7 years, and again here, ideology counts for TONS and it is clear that when the Left takes control, they will wrest that Overton and legal windows towards them as far and as quickly as they can by any means possible or at hand.
Don’t give them the handholds onto which to yank. Ever.
