Senate committee votes against right to carry on campus bill --
Your calls needed to bring the bill to the Senate floor
South Dakota Gun Owners Email Alert Network
PO Box 3845 Rapid City, SD 57709
605.221.5766
February 12, 2008
Action:
Seven left-leaning Senators voted yesterday to bury the right to carry on campus bill (HB 1261) in their committee.
They are hoping to stifle this popular pro-gun bill by refusing to send it to the Senate floor for a vote.
The answer to their anti-gun vote is a “smoke-out.” Twelve Senators can vote to bring HB 1261 to the floor, where it can then be voted on by the entire Senate body. “Smoke-out” is the proper term for this maneuver.
The South Dakota Gun Owners staff is working at the Capitol to line up the votes. We need your help in order to “turn up the heat” so the politicians will “see the light.”
Please call the Capitol at (605) 773-3821 and leave the following message for your Senator as soon as possible. The message is: “Please vote YES to support the smoke-out of HB 1261.”
You can find out who your Senator is by clicking here:
http://capwiz.com/gunowners/state/main/?state=SD&view=myofficials
Simply enter your address under ”My Elected Officials” and click “GO.”
Senate State Affairs committee vote on HB 1261
Voting Anti-gun (against HB 1261)
Sen. Dave Knudson - dknudson@dehs.com
Sen. Mac McCracken - sen.mccracken@state.sd.us
Sen. Gary Hanson - ghanson@sbtc.net
Sen. Scott Heidepriem - sen.heidepriem@state.sd.us
Sen. Ben Nesselhuf - sen.nesselhuf@state.sd.us
Sen. Ed Olson - sen.edolson@state.sd.us
Sen. Tom Dempster - senatordempster@sio.midco.net
Voting Pro-gun (for HB 1261)
Sen. Gene Abdallah - sen.abdallah@state.sd.us
Excused (was not present for the vote)
Sen. Bob Gray
Please feel free to email the committee members listed above and express your thanks or disapproval according to their votes. As always, courtesy is the best policy.
The anti-gun crowd in Pierre claims that in the event of a mass shooting, law-enforcement would shoot anybody who had a gun and ask questions later.
“‘We would have shot anybody who came out of that building with a weapon,’” stated Board of Regents lawyer Jim Shekleton in a supposed quote from law-enforcement after Virginia Tech.
To bolster his far-out claim, Shekleton recruited Vermillion Police Chief Art Mabry to speak before the Senate committee.
“We go in with the presumption that we have guns, and the bad guy has guns, and there’s no other guns in there,” stated Mabry.
“If other guns are in there, there’s a good chance that someone’s going to get hurt, someone’s going to get killed, and it’s probably not going to be the police officers. We will give that person instructions to drop the weapon now. After the word ‘now’ comes out of our mouth, if that gun isn’t on the floor, we’re going to start firing.”
This outrageous assertion is a slap in the face of South Dakota’s responsible and well trained law-enforcement officers.
“The rules governing use of force govern law-enforcement officers, too,” stated Rapid City SWAT training officer Martin Sonnenfeld. “We’re not going to just shoot people because they have a gun in their hand.”
But the facts have never stood in the way of anti-gun politicians.
Senate Majority Leader Dave Knudson led the vote against the right to carry on campus bill.
“I can’t see this as preventing tragedy so much as promoting it,” Knudson stated.
In other words, law-abiding citizens simply can’t be trusted with the right to bear arms in self-defense. Sen. Knudson’s vote against HB 1261 is the latest in his growing list of anti-gun votes.
For more on the “gun free” zones issue, click here: http://www.sdgo.org/breakingnews.htm