As expected, Democrats have introduced a number of very anti-gun bills for the upcoming legislative session. Republicans and Libertarians are are watching the bill texts be released, and are already rallying the troops for what will most likely be a repeat of last year: some of those bills will pass (with party-line votes), all will be vetoed, none of the vetoes will be overridden. A lot of people will have to waste a lot of time going to Concord to argue against the bills, coordinating legislative efforts, battling on social media, and so on.
It’s a little like Groundhog Day, except about guns instead of schools.
What I want to know is: Why aren’t we hearing about Republicans introducing pro-gun bills? Even if they’re not likely to pass, it’s worth introducing them to make it clear that ‘do nothing’ isn’t the other side of the issue. The alternative is kind of like playing dodgeball, but never throwing anything back at the other side.
Here’s one simple example: Given the existence of both the Second Amendment and Article 2-a, why aren’t Republicans, in every session, introducing a bill to have ‘firearms’ (and for that matter, ‘arms’, ‘weapons’, and other similar terms) removed from all RSAs and agency regulations altogether?
With something like that in play, the people who want to just hold the line would suddenly seem ‘moderate’ instead of extreme. It would expand the pro-gun side of the Overton window, also known as the ‘window of discourse’, which is something that desperately needs to happen.
Other examples: A bill to provide subsidized firearms training for anyone who wants it; a bill to provide ‘ammunition assistance’ for people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to conduct the training necessary to keep up their skills; a bill to provide a ‘pubic safety’ stipend to people who open carry, for their part in deterring criminal activity; and, of course, a ‘Second Amendment Sanctuary’ bill, making all federal firearm laws null and void within the state of New Hampshire.
And as supporting legislation, the Investigative Parity Act, so even if someone is arrested for violating a firearms-related law, he would get to conduct the same sort of self-investigation that is now done by police departments, the US Justice Department, and so on, before declaring himself innocent.
Would those pass? Probably not. But as they say about the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play.
And wouldn’t it at least be nice to be able to go to Concord and testify for a bill you’d like to see passed, instead of always having to testify against bills you hope will fail?
Also, wouldn’t it be great to watch people like the authors of bills like HB 1143 wetting their pants at the possibility of seeing even the inroads they’ve made so far all wiped out? Worst case is that some of them see the writing on the wall and move to some of the police states that more closely harmonize with their anti-freedom prejudices.
When discussing this, two objections are repeatedly brought up, so it’s worth dealing with them up front.
The first is that collecting taxes to subsidize these kinds of activities would be wrong. If taxation is theft, then taxation to provide people with ammo, or training, or stipends, is still theft.
The second is that introducing bills that have no realistic chance of passing — so called ‘DOA’ bills — is just virtue signaling, and a waste of time.
When considering both of these, it’s crucial to keep in mind that the point of this exercise would be to change the conversation. Actually passing bills would be icing on the cake.
For that reason, I would propose that the ammo subsidy come from the state education trust fund. After all, it’s for training, which is a kind of education; and if it’s important that a free society have educated citizenry, it’s just as important for that society to have an armed citizenry. (Note that only one of those is mentioned in the written constitutions of the federal and state governments.) And that means any argument against the subsidy would apply equally to subsidies for schools. Which would be a good thing. Let’s have both, or neither.
(With any luck, that discussion could also lead in this direction: People who can afford their own ammo don’t need the subsidy, so they shouldn’t get it. Similarly, people who can afford to school their own children don’t need a subsidy, so they shouldn’t get it. That’s another idea that needs to start being discussed.)
Similarly, I would propose that the public safety stipend come from the same fund as salaries for the state police — if possible, in direct competition with those salaries. Again, any arguments against it would apply to reducing police presence as well, which would be a good thing.
Note that there are already police officers whose full-time jobs are to provide training in the use of arms, and dedicated facilities for officers to practice what they’ve been taught. That training and those facilities can be — should be — made available to citizens at no additional cost to anyone. As a bonus, having police and other citizens learn and train together would create a safer society, and better police-community relations. Everyone wins but the criminals. Who could be against that?
So, on the one hand, you could think of this approach as introducing new subsidies. Or you could, more accurately, think of it as changing how we think about our existing subsidies, which is the first step towards re-purposing, reducing, or even eliminating, some of them.
What about the DOA issue?
Time invested in a DOA bill that makes an important point is not wasted. First, it affects subsequent discussions. Second, any time spent on it is time not spent on some other anti-liberty legislation.
(It’s a little like with gut bacteria — just having some kinds around helps by taking up space that would otherwise be occupied by harmful ones, even if they don’t provide any other benefits. Or, to make that more directly political, it’s like running candidates for the legislature, even if they never plan to show up except to vote on bills… or even if they never plan to show up at all. A Republican occupying a seat means that a Democrat isn’t sitting in it. I have personally witnessed this sales pitch being used to recruit candidates for office.)
Third, there are a lot of voters out there who don’t bother to vote because they don’t see anyone representing their interests. Just seeing some of these bills being proposed might, as was said of Dr. Ron Paul, cure their apathy.
Fourth, to paraphrase Milton Friedman, what is at one time political impossible can at a later time become politically inevitable.
As an example, consider constitutional carry laws, and before that, shall-issue laws. At one time, they seemed too far out of the mainstream to be possible. Now shall-issue seems completely normal, and constitutional carry is headed in that direction. Any why is that? Because legislatures around the country — including our own — kept introducing them, even when there was no realistic chance of their being passed.
Right now, the compromise between ‘keep things the way they are’ and ‘do something’ is almost always going to be to do something. If the compromise is between ‘do something really pro-gun’ and ‘do something really anti-gun’, the compromise has a much better chance of being to just drop the whole issue… and a smaller, but still finite, chance of being to do something pro-gun.
But this can’t happen if the Republican approach is to just keep playing defense. The goal has to be, not just to hold the line, but to get rid of it.
