Opponents of the Second Amendment and haters of self-defense are facing a relentless barrage of pro-Second Amendment and pro-self-defense legislation in state legislatures across the country.
It is as if the GOP took a page out of the Democrats’ book–improved, then applied it–so that just as the Democrats flooded legislatures with gun control measures in early 2013, Republicans are now flooding legislatures with bills broadening the exercise of Second Amendment rights and protecting the use of firearms for self-defense.
The move was evident on February 18 when Breitbart News reported a New York Timesadmission that Republican legislators from state-to-state were gaining “traction” by pushing Campus Carry as a way for women to fight rape and sexual assault. Since that time, Campus Carry has advanced in Arkansas, Florida, Texas, and Nevada, and is being considered in approximately 10 other states.
This was news because it marked a turning point wherein Republicans actually took away one of the Democrat’s go-to causes for gun control–domestic abuse–and turned it into a rallying cry for arming women.
And while Campus Carry was being pushed, a broad-based push for Constitutional Carry emerged wherein Republicans in the legislatures of Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and other states began pushing to abolish the need for a concealed carry permit. The legislatures in each of these states did so by arguing that having a permit requirement to carry a gun is tantamount to having a permit requirement to exercise Second Amendment rights, and therefore wrong.
In addition to continuing to advance Campus Carry and Constitutional Carry, Texas began pushing to become the 45th state in the union to have some type of Open Carry law on the books.
Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America rallied against Texas’ Open Carry legislation, and just when they appeared to have stifled it, Governor Greg Abbott (R) emerged to say Open Carry would become the law of the land in Texas as soon as legislation to carry in that fashion hits his desk.
That legislation is expected to land on his desk within weeks.
While facing these myriad defeats in state legislatures around the country, Moms Demand Action has simultaneously found it tougher and tougher to get businesses and corporations to go along with requests to disarm law-abiding citizens in their stores. Most recently, Breitbart News reported that Kroger CFO Michael Schlotman said the food retail chain rejects Moms Demand Action’s push to forbid open-carry of firearms in Kroger stores. And this announcement comes after grocer chains Fred Meyer and Harris Teeter both told Moms Demand Action the same thing.
But Moms Demand Action isn’t alone in losing big at this time. MSNBC recently reported that Everytown for Gun Safety–another pro-active, Bloomberg-funded gun control group that opposes Campus Carry–has now been relegated to the role of counting NRA victoriesacross the country.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.