No friend of gun owners
Sen. Gene Abdallah has supported every anti-gun bill since 2001
Few politicians can claim the distinction of having supported every piece of gun control they’ve ever seen. But State Senator Gene Abdallah (R-District 10) is one of those few.
Since taking office as a state legislator in 2001, Sen. Abdallah has sponsored or voted for every single anti-gun bill to be introduced.
His record reads like a portfolio from Handgun Control Inc. It includes two gun owner registration and profiling schemes, two state-level versions of the federal Lautenberg gun ban, a bill to double the penalty for bearing arms in a so-called “gun free zone” and a bill to make the pistol permit more expensive and harder to get.
Pitting Police Against Gun Owners
Most law officers who actually work the street know that more guns in the hands of the law-abiding means less crime.
Unfortunately, these fine men and women are often betrayed and overruled by the bureaucratic talking heads of their departments. Some of these high-level appointees have a long anti-gun track record in South Dakota. Gene Abdallah is a case in point. As the top ranking bureaucrat with the state Highway Patrol, he was openly hostile toward pro-gun legislation for years.
Then during his first year as a legislator, Sen. Abdallah co-sponsored a central registry bill which pitted the officer on the street against law-abiding gun owners.
The bill labeled concealed pistol permit holders as dangerous and encouraged officers to treat them as a threat. It was built on the idea that a person with a permit to carry a gun for self-defense is more likely to be dangerous than someone who doesn’t have a permit. In reality, permit holders are consistently among the most law-abiding citizens of the state.
But the anti-gun crowd has never paid much attention to the facts. They have long wanted the ability to profile gun owners during traffic stops or any other highway or domestic situations.
“I think any tool we can make to make our law-enforcement safer, and yes, I hope they have a heightened awareness if they know a gun is in the car, because, potentially, their life may depend on it,” said anti-gun Sen. J.P. Duniphan, who worked with Abdallah to push the database. Sen. Abdallah’s bill would have created the instantly accessible central registry needed to profile gun owners and would have thrown the door to abuse wide open.
Making Pistol Permits Hard to Get
In 2001, Sen. Abdallah also co-sponsored a state-level version of the hated federal Lautenberg gun ban, which has stripped thousands of ordinary citizens of their gun rights for life.
In 2003, Sen. Abdallah co-sponsored legislation to make it harder to obtain a pistol permit. The bill would have raised the price of the permit and pointlessly added a new photo ID requirement. Worse, it would have allowed state bureaucrats to add any new requirements they saw fit.
Currently, new pistol permit restrictions must receive four affirmative votes from the Legislature and be signed by the governor before they can be made law. This means that the people have a much better chance of stopping them. But Abdallah’s bill would have changed that.
Restrictions such as government mandated training, proficiency testing, expensive fingerprinting, further age limit restrictions, and any number of other infringements already forced on other states, could have been bureaucratically imposed here with little or no accountability to the people of South Dakota.
If at First You Don’t Succeed…Introduce Your Gun Control Again
In 2005, Sen. Abdallah supported and voted for another state-level Lautenberg gun ban. He also brought back the anti-gun central registry bill. While the language was cleverly changed, the effect is identical to the 2001 database scheme. Once again, pistol permit holders are profiled as a threat to law-enforcement, and the officer on the street is pitted against the law-abiding gun owner.
Hoping Gun Owners Won’t Remember
A brief review will show that Sen. Abdallah’s heavy anti-gun activity has been on the odd years. Every other year is an election year, and most politicians in South Dakota know enough not to support anti-gun legislation while the voters are looking.
Sen. Abdallah is no exception. During election years he has even voted for pro-gun bills that are already certain to pass. Apparently, he is relying on these token “pro-gun” votes to win re-election. Then he is free to continue pushing his anti-gun agenda in the off years.
But this year, he is facing a Republican challenger in the June 6th Primary Election.
Now it is up to SDGO to publish Senator Gene Abdallah’s anti-gun voting record and make sure the voters know what he has been up to.