A third Republican governor—Matt Bevin of Kentucky—will reportedly sign legislation generically called “Constitutional Carry” that allows citizens of the Blue Grass State to carry firearms without a permit.
If that happens, he will be the third governor to sign such a bill this year, the other two being South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt. All are Republicans.
According to WKYT News, Gov. Bevin, who first took office in 2015, had an interesting response to those who were opposed to the legislation.
“And for those people who are offended at this idea and don’t like it, there are other places in America where they could live and/or they learn to live with what they don’t like in their immediate state,” he reportedly said.
Contrast those governors with Washington State’s Gov. Jay Inslee, who declared his candidacy for the White House last week, and is running as a “climate change” candidate who immediately left a carbon footprint by heading east to appear on ABC’s “This Week.”
In the Washington State that Inslee appears to be leaving in his quest for higher office, the notion of “Constitutional Carry” would be regarded as a horrible idea by the Legislature’s Democrat majority. Inslee, a Democrat, supports stricter gun control laws, as does his widely presumed successor, current Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
Republicans have called on Inslee to resign from office if he’s going to be traveling around the country seeking the White House. He already set a precedent in 2012 when he quit Congress to run for the Washington governorship.
At his official announcement event Friday, reported by MyNorthwest.com, Inslee declared, “We’ve taken on the NRA (in Washington state. We’ve expanded background checks, we’ve protected victims of abuse, we’ve banned bump stocks and we’re not done, let’s ban assault weapons and take weapons of war off of our streets.”
With that remark, Inslee may have just confirmed what Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said in a recent interview with Liberty Park Press last month. At the time, the sheriff stated that the true purpose of anti-gun Initiative 1639 was to create a definition for a firearm that does not exist: the so-called “semiautomatic assault rifle.”
“I was in the U.S. Army,” Knezovich said. “My rifle was never called an ‘assault weapon.’ They passed this initiative to create that definition to include every semi auto in the state.”
So, what gets banned in Washington under Inslee’s vision? Every semiautomatic rifle that’s ever been manufactured.
Compare Inslee’s view of gun rights and his apparent lack of trust of Evergreen State gun owners with the views of those three Republican governors and there is no comparison at all.
Last Thursday, according to the Washington State Department of Licensing, there were just under 613,000 active concealed pistol licenses in the state. Those citizens have exercised their right to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state under Article 1, Section 24 of the state constitution.
One question that might be asked of the would-be president could probe this lack of trust of the very citizens he hopes to lead, while three other governors have signaled overwhelming trust of law-abiding gun owners in their states.
How do people trust a presidential hopeful who doesn’t trust them?
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