(Chuck Muth) – Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairman William Horne (D-Clark County) is threatening to screw around with Nevada's gun laws in response to the Carson City IHOP shooting in which four people, including three Nevada National Guard members, were killed by a mentally ill man.
Horne claims he's pro-gun, but asked in a recent interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal: “Why does a typical citizen need to own an assault weapon?”
Alas, the Constitution isn't about “needs,” Assemblyman. It's about rights. But the short answer to your question as to why a typical citizen might “need” an assault weapon: Because the bad guys have them!
As the character Ramon Rojo explained to Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars, “When a man with .45 meets a man with a rifle, the man with a pistol will be a dead man.” And if, God forbid, the time ever comes that a “typical citizen” comes face-to-face with a bad guy bearing an assault weapon, they'll have a better chance not ending up dead if they're not armed with a pea shooter…or worse, unarmed completely.
Speaking of which…..
As you may recall, a young woman named Amanda Collins was brutally raped in a UNR parking garage in 2007 by a now-convicted murderer. Collins had no chance to defend herself – even though she was a concealed carry permit holder – thanks to state laws prohibiting her from carrying her properly licensed handgun on campus without special permission.
Amanda was a sitting duck.
In response, a truly bi-partisan bill (SB-231) was introduced in the Nevada Legislature in 2011 – The Amanda Collins Act – which would have allowed all CCW holders to carry their weapons on campus to give students and others a fighting chance against violent predators.
The bill passed the Senate overwhelmingly, with only six “victim disarmament” state senators – Steven Horsford, Shirley Breeden, Ruben Kihuen, Sheila Leslie, Mike Schneider and Valerie Weiner – voting to continue giving rapists and murderers the upper hand in dark corners of Nevada's college campuses.
The bill was then sent over to Horne's Judiciary Committee where Horne unilaterally killed it.
Indeed, Horne – despite an outpouring of public support for the bill – refused to allow a vote on it. “I don't believe the votes are there (in committee) and I certainly don't think they are there on the floor,” His Omnipotence declared in refusing to make it tougher for killers to kill Nevadans on campus.
If anyone ought to be disarmed, it should be William Horne. And if anyone really wants to use the IHOP tragedy to change the gun laws, then they should change the gun laws to allow highly trained, uniformed National Guardsmen to wear their side arms when out in public in order to defend themselves….not to mention the rest of us.
