Editorial Opinion – February 2016

You won’t believe what is really going on, but I am about to show it to you. The fruit is set; it ripens in the fall.

Now comes State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver with a law that will ban weapons and require the GBI to confiscate weapons, bullets and magazines. The proposed new law is House Bill 731. More on this in a moment.

Take a look at Rep. Oliver. Lifted directly from her website, here is what she says about herself.

“When Oliver was elected to the Senate, she was appointed to chair the Judiciary Committee during her freshman term, a rare legislative distinction. The appointment was also notable in that it marked the first time in 40 years that a woman had been named to chair a standing Senate committee. During the 2004 session, she was appointed Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, becoming the first person to serve as Chair of both House and Senate Judiciary Committees and the first woman to ever serve as Chair of either committee.

“Oliver currently sits on the House Appropriations, Judiciary, Governmental Affairs, Juvenile Justice and Science and Technology Committees. She was appointed by the Georgia Supreme Court to the Committee on Justice for Children and by Speaker David Ralston to the Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform.”

She goes on to say, “She has been honored for her legislative work, being named Woman of Achievement by the Atlanta YWCA and Legislator of the Year by the Garden Club of Georgia. In 2011, she was given the Common Cause Democracy Award and the Georgia Conservation Voters Legacy Award.”

A quick look at the language of HB 731 makes it clear that she did not write this bill, and that is very important to note. For instance, the bill reads, “(ii)  Is fully jacketed with a jacket weight of more than 25 percent of the total weight of the projectile, is larger than .22 caliber, and is designed and intended for use in a firearm; or

(iii)  Does not have projectiles whose cores are composed of soft materials, including, but not limited to, soft materials such as lead, lead alloys, zinc, or zinc alloys, frangible projectiles designed primarily for sporting purposes, or any other projectiles or projectile cores that the Attorney General of the United States finds to be primarily intended to be used for sporting purposes or industrial purposes or that otherwise do not constitute armor-piercing ammunition as defined by federal law.

So, what is going on here?

Rep. Oliver and a handful of Democratic Georgia legislators have introduced a bill that is going nowhere in the Georgia Legislature. GeorgiaCarry.org and the Georgia Hunting and Fishing Federation will see to that. Thank goodness we have active, sportsmen-centric groups like these to make sure bad laws don’t pass.

However, Rep. Oliver and her minions are laying a part of a national foundation to serve the Obama/Clinton goal of gun confiscation.

It will work this way. A Democratic  leader will take a stage somewhere to call for action, noting that, “Bills calling for confiscation of guns have been introduced in 47 states across the nation. The people of the nation crying out for action,” he or she will claim.

Georgia will be one of those states.

Rep. Oliver has already achieved her real objective. It is a common ploy by social and environmental groups to create “facts” that are not the truth.

Put to a popular vote, or a vote in the legislature, her bill would fail by a wide margin. But because it has been introduced here and will also be introduced in many other state legislatures, gun control advocates will claim that there is a legislative “ground swell” of people across the nation supporting their gun-confiscation position.

I can hear something like this being included in a speech at a national convention this coming August, for instance: “Bills calling for basic common sense gun violence measures have been introduced all across the nation! We are tired of waiting! Congress must act now!”

Horse feathers.

HB 731 got its number in Georgia, but it was written in an anti-Second Amendment think-tank to serve an upcoming political speech. That speech has already been written and is waiting to be delivered. When it gets delivered, remember where you heard this, and understand they do stuff like this all the time. They are building their false narrative.