This just in from the Missouri General Asylum...uh, the General Assembly.
Meet House Bill 633, which states—and I’m not kidding—that “any member of the general assembly who proposes a piece of legislation that further restricts the right of an individual to bear arms, as set forth under the second amendment of the Constitution of the United States, shall be guilty of a class D felony.”
Yes, it’s not enough that Missouri is on the cutting edge of the quasi-secessionist movement to make it a crime for state law-enforcement officials to enforce any gun-control laws that might be enacted by the federal government. Now one legislator wants to criminalize the act of proposing gun-control legislation in Missouri.
There's nothing like obliterating the First Amendment to protect the Second Amendment.
You’re probably wondering where this touched individual came from. In what backwoods location, what Deliverance-style setting does this person reside in his armed bunker?
That would be our own south St. Louis County. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mike Leara (R-96th), hails from just outside of Sunset Hills. He's also a co-sponsor of the bill to ban enforcement of federal gun laws in Missouri.
And get this: He was unopposed by the Democrats in the 2012 general election.
Yikes.
One can probably assume that even in the ferociously pro-gun legislature, Leara’s wacky bill won’t be going far, although it would certainly provide some comic relief if it at least got a hearing. But it has a good chance of making the circuit of too-strange-to-believe national news snippets, furthering Missouri’s quest to become known as the Appalachia of the Midwest.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
Commentary by Ray Hartmann
