JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (Mar. 5, 2020) – Yesterday, a Missouri House committee held a hearing on a bill that would take on federal gun control; past, present and future. Passage into law would represent a major step toward ending federal acts that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms within the state.
Rep. Jered Taylor (R-Republic) filed House Bill 1637 (HB1637), and Sen. Eric Burlison (R-Battlefield) filed the companion, Senate Bill 588 (SB588). Titled the “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” the legislation would ban any person, including any public officer or employee of the state and its political subdivisions, from enforcing any past, present or future federal “acts, laws, executive orders, administrative orders, court orders, rules, or regulations” that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. You can read more about the legislation at this link.
Yesterday, the Missouri House General Laws committee held a hearing on HB1637, and according to Ron Calzone of Missouri First, it went quite well. In some ways, unprecedented.
Below you can read the update he sent about the hearing in full:
We printed and delivered over 900 witness forms to the committee, along with this map showing how widespread the support for SAPA is.
There was a lot of good testimony in those witness forms that the committee will have the opportunity to read online with the special link I sent them.
About a dozen constitution supporting citizens showed up in support of SAPA, and only against. Although there were several members of Moms Demand Action, only one spoke. Her testimony was pretty inconsequential.
Committees are not accustomed to getting hundreds of witness forms, and they have NEVER seen a bill with 84 cosponsors, like HB 1637. The hard work y’all have done encouraging reps to cosponsor the bill is paying off.
Here are the next steps:
1) The committee has to consider a “Do pass” motion. If that motion gets a majority vote, they will be saying they recommend that the whole House of Representatives take up and pass the bill.
2) The chair of the committee, Rep. Dean Plocher, must report the bill out of committee.
3) The Speaker of the House, Elijah Haahr, has to send the bill to the Administrative Oversight Rules Committee.
4) The chair of the Rules Committee, Rep. Holly Rehder, has to schedule a hearing and vote for the bill.
5) She has to, then, report it out of that committee at which time the bill will advance to the Formal Calender, where it has to wait its turn to advance to the floor.
6) Once the bill gets its turn on the floor of the whole House, part of one day will be devoted to “perfecting” the bill, and a vote will be taken.
7) After at least one legislative day, the whole body will take a “3rd Read” vote, and if it gets at least 82 votes (three less than the number of sponsors it already has), the bill will be sent to the Senate for a hearing.
The Tenth Amendment Center works to preserve and protect Tenth Amendment freedoms through information and education. The center serves as a forum for the study and exploration of state and individual sovereignty issues, focusing primarily on the decentralization of federal government power. Visit https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/