RI Gun Bill Joins Ranks Of Stalled Gun Control

Posted at 8:00 pm on March 30, 2020 by Tom Knighton

I’m not going to make a case for COVID-19 being a good thing. It’s a nasty disease that thousands have died from and tens of thousands more have been infected with. It’s an ugly thing that I really wish had never come to our shores.

Unfortunately, it’s here and all we can do is try to deal with it.

Part of that is to at least acknowledge that it has led to a few good things. For example, a number of gun control measures have stalled out and will likely die rather than become law, all because of COVID-19.

Some Rhode Island gun control measures seem to be set to join that club.

Wednesday gun management monthly bill hearings for the Rhode Island Home Judiciary Committee ended up cancelled more than fears that a “large crowd” of listening to attendees could lead to the distribute of the Chinese coronavirus.

Among the the factors a massive group was envisioned at the hearing was the fact that somewhere around 17 charges dealing with guns ended up scheduled for consideration.

Of course, without those hearings, the bills can’t come up for a vote. Since it’s starting to look like it might be a long while before we get to the point when these recommendations will be in our rearview mirror, it’s also likely it won’t be until after the legislative session.

So, COVID-19 will effectively kill the gun control bills. These include an effort to define “assault weapons” and ban advertising them if they’re not “registered.” as well as measures seeking to ban incentives for teachers to get gun permits.

Not that any of those measures would likely hold up in court–after all, new firearms generally aren’t considered “registered”–but they could still jam up some folks in the meantime.

Only now, they aren’t going to become law. Not this year, at least.

The downside, however, is that because this is COVID-19 related rather than an outright defeat, we’re likely to see these bills pop up again next year. Anti-gunners are notoriously persistent, after all, and they will try to ram this down the throats of law-abiding Rhode Islanders.

All this while ignoring the fact that law-abiding citizens aren’t the problem in the first place. Then again, Rhode Island is pretty low-crime as it is, so I fail to see what kind of problem they have that requires this kind of response.

Unless, of course, the “problem” as they see it is that not everyone is forced to agree with them that guns are bad, so they’re going to do everything they can to push things that direction.