Montini: Republicans block gun law votes on day 4 shooting victims are buried in Florida

EJ Montini: The Arizona Legislature is completely under the thumb of the gun lobby.

EJ Montini
The Republic | azcentral.com
Arizona House Minority Leader Randy Friese

Democratic Rep. Randy Friese on Tuesday made a completely irrational request of his Republican colleagues in the Arizona Legislature.

“I’m asking you to have courage, to have the political will,” Friese said.

HA!

Fat chance.

I take that back. There was NO chance.

Victims don't matter, lobbyists do

Friese was urging his colleagues to vote on banning so-called “bump stocks,” which can turn semi-automatic weapons into something close to automatic. He was asking them to at least give hearings to a number of bills Democrats have proposed dealing with firearms and surrounding issues.

He was asking them at a time when the nation is suffering through yet another mass shooting at a school.

“We have an epidemic in this country and we cannot continue to turn our back on it," Friese said.

Actually, they can.

Snubbing the Florida victims

And they did. They turned their backs on the epidemic, and they did so on a day when there were funerals for four of the 17 people killed in the Valentine's Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The Arizona Legislature is completely under the thumb of the gun lobby.

The Republicans in control refuse to allow a vote on whether there should be a federal background check on every gun sale; or on whether a judge can be petitioned to keep someone with mental-health issues from possessing a gun; or on a bill that would have required domestic-violence offenders to give police any weapons they possessed while on probation or while they are under an order of protection.

It goes on. It has gone on like this for years.

The people who run the legislature don’t possess the courage to pass such legislation.

They don’t possess the courage even to allow a vote. They refuse to put themselves on the record, to take a public stand, rather than kneeling before the National Rifle Association and associates.

Just the opposite of courage

If anything, they’ve done just the opposite.

Republicans not only have refused to consider any common sense gun legislation, they have proposed and advanced bills like House Bill 2535, which would rescind the gun safety regulations currently required of foster parents. A law that could potentially make it easier for a child to get his hands on a gun.

Republican Rep. Kelly Townsend said the answer isn’t in new laws. She said, “The answer is changing our culture first of all.”

Actually, changing our culture is the second most important part of the answer.

Changing the Legislature is first.

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