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Hello and welcome to another T-Rex Talk.
In this episode, we're going to be talking about
some political lobbying and legislative stuff
that is going on in the world.
Well, I guess just only in the United States.
But also in Tennessee.
One of the things that we're going to be doing next week
is we're going to be going to the Tennessee Capitol in Nashville,
and we're going to be talking to legislators on a number of
subcommittees and full committees about a number of gun control
bills and anti-gun control bills.
Pretty much all of the good gun freedom bills that we have
in the legislative session this year are going to be heard
on March 7th, which is a Tuesday.
And so a bunch of us are going to go sit in on those subcommittees
and committees, talk directly to those guys.
So I'll be there.
Some other folks will be there.
We'll be handing out hats.
We'll be handing out signs.
So if you're in the area, you can swing by.
And I'll try to link to some details as to how you can find
the place and get in and stuff like that in the show notes below.
But there's a lot of stuff that's going on in other states as well.
A lot of gun freedom and a lot of anti-gun freedom stuff.
And essentially, we've talked about this quite a bit before.
It's a really simple metric.
The states that have been taking freedom away
are continuing to take freedom away.
And the states that have been getting more free in different areas
are adding a lot more gun freedom.
So Texas is on the verge of legalizing campus carry.
Same with West Virginia.
These are bills that are going to pass.
These are bills that are going to be signed by the governors.
These are bills that are going to be going to be law in these two states.
And then there's South Carolina, which is going to have
some level of constitutional carry and Florida
that's going to have some level of permitless carry.
But there is a difference between constitutional carry and permitless carry.
Because I would argue that constitutional carry is a total absence of any level
of restriction from the government and permitless carry
just allows you to carry a gun without a permit
but still has a whole bunch of different restrictions
and provides other things like that.
So Tennessee is a good example of a state that has permitless carry
but I would argue not constitutional carry.
That being said, constitutional carry is a much better marketing term
for people on the right than permitless carry,
even if it's not strictly accurate.
And so this is one of those things where it's actually difficult to describe
exactly what you're talking about with people that use the label differently.
So many different news outlets are talking about those two states
getting constitutional carry.
A lot of people are pointing out that it's merely permitless carry.
People in the middle kind of confused as to what's actually going on
and what it will actually allow.
And then apparently, according to our friend Matt at Fuddbesters,
there's a bunch of weird stuff about the bill that is actually going to do
the permitless carry in Florida.
There's a whole bunch of weird bits of code in that bill,
which is not surprising to me because that's how legislation works everywhere,
not just in Florida.
And I want to talk a little bit about that in a minute,
just kind of the way that the way the legislation works,
the way the changes to legislation works, the difficulty in making it work well.
But I want to mention while we're on the subject of Matt,
he is someone who has a lawsuit against the ATF
and that lawsuit is a pretty significant lawsuit.
It's actually going after the entire NFA.
So depending on when that case gets heard and depending on how far that the ruling
in that case actually goes, that is one that is actually calling into question
the entire National Firearms Act of 1934.
But there's a whole bunch of other lawsuits against the ATF.
There are lawsuits filed by a whole bunch of different gun rights organizations
and several attorney generals from many, many different states,
all calling into question different rule changes from the ATF,
mostly the pistol brace one, but also the frame and receiver stuff.
So that is something that we need to keep a good eye on
because all of those lawsuits are going to be heard in the next couple of months,
at least early, early on.
And so whether or not there's going to be an injunction on that rule change,
which the pistol brace one goes into effect, I believe it is May 31st.
So whether there's an injunction that stops that from happening or not,
we will see.
Like we mentioned before, if the ATF wanted to look like they were a calm,
reasonable organization, they would say,
oh, there's a bunch of lawsuits pending about this particular rule change.
Let's put the very significant felony penalties on hold until these lawsuits get resolved.
That would be a very reasonable thing to do.
I don't think the ATF is planning to do that at all,
partly because on February 28th, which is the anniversary of the beginning of the
Waco siege, the ATF posted on social media pictures of their new leader,
Mr. Dentalbach and his deputy at an ATF memorial lamenting and honoring the
four ATF agents who died in that siege.
But no mention of all the other people who died, the men, the women and the
children in the fiery aftermath and the comments on that particular social media
post were also pretty fiery.
And it was interesting to see that there were something like 400,000 people
who had seen the post and less than 200 likes.
So that is a pretty impressive ratio.
The sheer lack of support for that particular post only matched by the sheer
lack of understanding and sureness of touch displayed by whoever is running
the ATF's social media pages at the moment.
But let's get back to the legislation.
There's a whole bunch of legislation that is pending at the state level and at
the federal level, and at least at the state level in Tennessee.
It's a very complicated process to actually deal with the laws that are on the books,
let alone the laws that you are trying to pass or the code that you are trying
to prune back.
It's very hard to actually figure out what all of these bills are going to do,
particularly when there are things like constitutional carry or permitless carry
bills that touch large amounts of existing criminal code and change things
that are referred to elsewhere in the code.
Legal code is a lot like computer code.
We talked about this a little bit in a YouTube video back when Tennessee's
permitless carry was being discussed a couple years ago.
And Tennessee has a lot of code.
The TCA is about 2 million lines of code.
If I had to guess based on just the page count of all of the books,
which means there is just a ton of stuff written down and explained rather
poorly and referred to by other parts of the code.
And so it is a pain to try to change this stuff and figure out exactly what
those changes are going to do and how those changes are going to be interpreted
by say the judges who eventually hear cases based on these particular bits of
code and the complexity of this process also results in a fair amount of confusion
across a whole bunch of different groups.
First of all, it makes things rather difficult and confused for gun rights
organizations that wants to accomplish good positive changes.
So I'm not going to give any specifics, but I am aware of several gun
organizations in a few different states who are trying to accomplish the exact
same end goals and they disagree on the best way to go about that,
which is not that big of a deal.
But there is a fair amount of coverage in the press and Scuttlebutt and gossip
about how gun rights organizations cannot get along.
There is no consensus among the gun rights organization.
There is no understanding whatsoever about what they are trying to do.
It's just a whole bunch of NRA guys getting paid to cause trouble and there's
absolutely no legal standing for what they're trying to do.
This is obviously not the case.
But there is a fair amount of consternation sometimes between different
groups who are trying to figure out the best way to accomplish goals that they
do have in common and goals that they have in common because there are
constitutional principles that are clear and held in common.
And when gun rights organizations that are on the same page ideologically and
principally and are working towards the common goal of increasing gun rights
for the citizenry, when those gun rights groups cannot necessarily agree on the
best way to accomplish something when they are trying to change some code here
and there and determine exactly how the different judges in a state are going
to interpret the tweaks to a document that has two billion lines of preexisting
tangled buggy code.
Well, I mean those disagreements are not really their fault.
They're in a situation where small changes to the code are really all that
the legislators are willing to do.
But big sweeping changes to the code are the only things that would actually
have guaranteed clear results.
I'm thinking of one bill in specific here in Tennessee and I'm not going to
give any particulars because this is a bill that is still in flight and everyone
who was waited on this bill are friends of mine.
But all of the friends of mine that have weighed in on this bill have pointed
out three different ways that we could accomplish our goal.
And different groups have pointed out that each of those three different ways
has some very significant weaknesses.
There are ways that that bill or the language that it implements or the changes
that it would apply to the original code that is on the books could be
misinterpreted by various judges in a way that actually does more harm
than good.
And the problem isn't that one approach is right and the other two approaches are
wrong.
The problem is that the criticisms of every approach are probably correct.
Amongst all of the judges in Tennessee's 31 different districts,
there are probably people who would miss apply every single option when it comes
to the new code.
They could probably figure out a way to miss apply this code or miss apply
the changes to the code in such a way that it could do more harm than good.
And again, this is not the problem of the people writing the new code.
This is the problem with the old code that is already there.
This is a problem with the way that that old code is going to be interpreted
by judges who are going to be reviewing these cases in the future,
which makes lobbying in Tennessee or any other state a fairly frustrating
thing because there is so much that is wrong with the existing system and with
the existing code and the cleanup process is kind of unpleasant.
And oftentimes you have to worry about the unintended consequences of trying to
do the right thing.
And then you really have to sort of pick your battles as well because there
are a bunch of things that would be really, really good to change, but the
opposition to them is going to be pretty significant.
And oftentimes because it is completely misunderstood.
I'm going to give you an example and I will tell you exactly what it is.
It is either HB 977 or SB 977 actually having a little bit of trouble
remembering all of the individual bill numbers.
So apparently I'm not going to tell you exactly which one it is.
But what it does is remove a whole bunch of redundant code relating to law
enforcement officers carrying weapons in different places.
And there's a bunch of reasons to remove redundant code.
There's a bunch of reasons to try to take that two million lines of
Tennessee annotated code and trim it way, way, way down to something that is
clear that is understandable and that does only what the state of Tennessee
should do.
But if you read the blurb describing what this bill does, it says that it
decriminalizes law enforcement officers drinking on the job and carrying
while intoxicated.
This is not what the bill does at all.
This bill does indeed remove code that relates to Tennessee law enforcement
officers being intoxicated while carrying.
But it doesn't legalize this because there are other places in the Tennessee
code that prohibits people from carrying firearms while drinking.
So removing a redundant line of code in section A does absolutely nothing to
legalize something that is still prohibited in section B or C or 39 or
whatever it actually is.
I am not up to speed on all two million lines of code.
And this year unwieldy nature of the existing code and the process of making
changes to the existing code and figuring out exactly what that will
entail and the necessity of describing all of that stuff to all of the
legislators and their aides who are looking at a whole bunch of other
bills every single session is pretty daunting.
The whole thing kind of reminds me of a home remodel project where you've got
to figure out is this building worth fixing up a little bit here and a little
bit there or do we need to get this thing down to the studs and start not
completely from scratch but massive reconstructions of everything that
isn't foundational.
And you got to remember that this decision is being made about a structure
that you're living in at this exact moment and not just you but all of your
friends and neighbors.
That's why when I talk to different people about different strategies of
political involvement and political change and legislative lobbying and the
judicial stuff that is going on, I am almost as conflicted as all the other
gun rights organizations are themselves.
I can see a tremendous amount of value in the small victories that we are
obtaining and I can see a tremendous amount of value in big sweeping changes
that take us back to more foundational stuff.
I can see the danger in trying to move the needle too fast and I can see the
danger in small fiddly changes that leave behind a whole bunch of legacy
code that doesn't really connect to stuff and could potentially get a lot of
people in trouble.
I can see all of the sides of these arguments.
I can see a lot of strengths and a lot of weaknesses and I don't particularly
enjoy trying to make decisions when things are that muddled.
But what is pretty clear is the needle is indeed moving in a very
specific direction.
There's legislation that we did not get past last year because it tried to move
the needle too much.
A great example of this would be lowering the carry age from 21 to 18.
We had pretty good support for that bill in the house, but we weren't able to get
it through the Tennessee Senate.
That bill was completely squashed in the year 2022.
However, the other thing that happened in the year 2022 was the Supreme Court
decision on Bruin and shortly after that decision.
People filed lawsuits in different states.
The state of Texas was forced to allow 18 year old security and a recent
decision in the state of Tennessee did exactly the same thing.
So while we were not legislatively able to get carry permits for 18 year olds,
a judge has forced Tennessee to do that just in the last couple of months.
So the needle is moving in the correct direction and there are more tools
pushing it in those correct directions.
So I am very encouraged even though sometimes it feels like the going is
slow and difficult.
And even though we do have disagreements and arguments about the best way to move
the needle, I do think that there is increasing unity among the people who are
pushing for gun rights.
They don't want to give you an example from David Hogg.
If you don't know who David Hogg is, he's a 20 year old Floridian and he is known
as a survivor of the Parkland Florida school shooting.
Although at this point it is still not exactly clear where he was during the
shooting, but he has become a relatively prominent gun control activist since then.
And he had a couple of interesting tweets this last week.
In the first week, he said, you have no right to a gun because you are not a
militia.
When you're talking about your Second Amendment rights, you are talking about a
state's right to have what is today the National Guard, the modern interpretation
of the Second Amendment is a ridiculous fraud pushed for decades by the gun lobby.
And we know that this is not actually true.
There's a whole bunch of reasons why the Second Amendment refers to individual
rights, not group rights.
There are recent and not so recent Supreme Court rulings that verify this.
There are legal scholars that have written about this.
And then there are of course the things that the founders wrote about the Second
Amendment themselves and there are all the militia bills and militia laws that
they passed shortly after the war for American independence that describe what
the Second Amendment is for and who the militia is and so forth.
And even today, this idea that David Hogg pushes out that says that you are not
a militia is ridiculous.
Current existing federal code says that you are in the militia if you are a
male of a certain age who is not a member of the existing armed forces, which
means that statistically if you read David Hogg's tweet saying that you're not a
militia, you actually are in that unorganized militia.
But his second tweet is kind of interesting where he says, we need to stop
using the NRA's talking points and false interpretation of the Second
Amendment that they have been pushing for decades.
Their version of the Second Amendment is younger than I am.
Now in this particular tweet, he's actually kind of right.
Obviously, this interpretation of the Second Amendment is not younger than
David Hogg is.
He says the NRA has been pushing it for decades and yet he says that it's younger
than he is.
He's only 22.
So, but even though this particular interpretation of the Second Amendment
that we are talking about, that it does in fact describe individual rights
and who is actually in the militia.
This idea that the Second Amendment means all weapons, not just non-military
weapons, these ideas are relatively recent rediscoveries for a lot of folks
in the gun culture.
So, while David Hogg is completely wrong in saying that these have been
manufactured recently by the NRA, he is right in saying that these are things
that have not been discussed until, I mean, more or less his lifetime, but
you know, probably his whole lifetime.
It was in the early 2000s that the Internet's really showed a large blossoming
of what I would call modern gun culture.
There was magpoles are the dynamic carbine.
There were a whole bunch of gun forums.
There were people talking widely and openly about things that previously
were just a little bit hard to discuss.
And there was an interest in the principles behind gun rights.
A lot of Americans, post-Waco and post-weapons ban were very interested
in firearm things and that has resulted in a rediscovery of a whole bunch
of these different ideas as well as a more martial culture, which was not
created recently by the NRA, but it's something that America has had in its
foundation and in its founding and in its backbone for over 200 years.
Long before America fought for independence from Britain, it was a network
of colonies filled with people who were responsible for one another, their
defense and their care and the preservation of their rights.
That is why when 1776 rolled around, Americans were actually ready to resist
tyranny and to fight what was at the time the most powerful nation on earth.
There was a strong culture in the United States towards personal and public
defense, martial virtues, weapon ownership and a really principled
articulation of these things.
And that is something that I believe gun culture folks are understanding
better and better.
And I actually believe that that is what David Hogg is seeing.
He thinks that is something that is brand new, but that's just because he
doesn't understand history well enough to see that this is something that has
been part of American culture longer than the United States themselves.
So kudos to him for what I think is probably actually a fairly solid
observation just without any of the context.
But this is a fascinating development that has happened during David Hogg's
lifetime, a rediscovery of these really important principles.
And we can see that a large group of people are taking these principles
seriously.
We can see that in Supreme Court decisions.
We can see that in legislative changes.
We can see that in the way that the needle is moving for the future.
So even though there is a lot of work to do and the cleanup is difficult.
There's two million lines of Tennessee code that need to be gone through by
somebody and a lot of them just need a lot of cleaning up.
I think we're on the right track.
So hopefully we will have a really good day at the Capitol on March 7th.
Some of you may be able to join us and we'll see what happens there.
I'm looking forward to it.
Well, that's not entirely true.
I really enjoy spending time at the Capitol, but I'm looking forward to seeing
some of you guys that I am looking forward to continuing this conversation
with a number of representatives that are trying to do the right thing and
really understand some of the principles that we are trying to defend
and regain for the citizens of the United States and elsewhere.
Thank you so much for listening to this podcast.
The next episode may even have an update on how things went in Nashville.
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