As political “red” states go, Wyoming is among the reddest. It’s so red, in fact, that the state has a law on the books providing penalties for government officials who infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of Cowboy State citizens.
Wyoming Statute 9-14-203 was passed in 2022 and imposes a penalty of up to a year of imprisonment and a fine up to $2,000 for state or local officials who infringe on 2A rights. Now, however, eight state legislators are pushing a plan to do away with the statute.
House Bill 283 completely rewrites the statute, taking out the Second Amendment protection portion. It originally stated: “This state and all political subdivisions of this state are prohibited from using any personnel or funds appropriated by the legislature of the state of Wyoming, or any other source of funds that originated within the state of Wyoming to enforce, administer or cooperate with any unconstitutional act, law, treaty, executive order, rule or regulation of the United States government that infringes on or impedes the free exercise of individual rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.”
If passed, the new provision would read: “Except as otherwise provided in this section, this state and all political subdivisions of this state are prohibited from using any personnel or funds appropriated by the legislature of the state of Wyoming, or any other source of funds that originated within the state of Wyoming or any federal funds or other source of funds to enforce, administer or cooperate with attempt to enforce, provide material aid, support or participate in any manner in the enforcement or implementation of any unconstitutional act, law, treaty, executive order, rule or regulation of the United States government that infringes on or impedes the free exercise of individual rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States solely regarding firearms, accessories or ammunition against any law-abiding citizen.”
In another section, the measure strikes the section levying penalties for officials who knowingly violate citizens’ Second Amendment rights.
According to a state alert by Gun Owners of America (GOA), the eight lawmakers pushing the measure are Reps. Robert Wharff, Bo Biteman, Tim French, Bob Ide, Dan Laursen, Troy McKeown, Tim Salazar and Darin Smith.
“Why do these eight legislators want to destroy a Wyoming law that many pro-gun outlets have called America’s best Second Amendment Protection Act?” GOA asked in the alert. “Contact each of these Legislators and ask them why they propose to destroy the criminal provisions in Wyoming Statute 9-14-203. “
Indeed, that’s a valid question. Why would lawmakers move to get rid of such provisions? The only logical answer is that they plan to violate those provisions at one point or another and don’t want to be prosecuted for doing so. Alas, an exhaustive internet search didn’t turn up any further information on the bill or why its sponsors introduced it.
Ultimately, it remains to be seen whether the eight lawmakers garner enough support for the measure. It’ll be a shame if they do, as the Wyoming law is the envy of gun-rights proponents in many other states who wish their citizens had such strong protection.
Are any of these politicians born and raised in the Cowboy state? Or are their parents from a red communist state?
h ttps://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/10/18/wyoming-lawmakers-will-try-again-to-restrict-chinese-land-ownership/
some may be restricting it, looks like some have been gotten too already. chicoms don’t want guns in wyoming.
Wharff if from Utah.
Biteman from Michigan.
French is from Wyoming.
Ide is from Colorado.
Laursen from Wyoming.
McKeon from Wyoming.
Smith is from Wyoming.
All are Republican. Clearly they’re up to something or have something to gain.
Officials aren’t used to being held accountable. It’s bipartisan. And of course, there could be some donors pulling the strings.
Speaking of donors with deep pockets, I hope Thom Tillis votes against RFK Jr. so that Tillis will incur the wrath of Nicole Shanahan. She’s ready to take out Warnock from GA next year which would mean supporting the Republican opponent. Tillis is another backstabbing RINO. He needs to go.
Send him and Graham on a bus trip to Cuba
RINOs and Dems trying to give themselves flexibility for any future “incidents” or “events”m
By trying to rewrite the law the jerks infringe.
So……are they subject to a fine for this action?
Interesting that they’re 100% Republicans.
Darin Smith’s campaign website even says “Pro-God, Pro-Family, Pro-2nd Amendment, Pro-Ag, Pro-Coal, Pro-Oil & Gas.”
Sort of makes me want to take a second look at the exact wording of the text, were they to have their way. So, I did.
The proposal is for the law to be amended to read:
“Except as otherwise provided in this section, this state and all political subdivisions of this state are prohibited from using any personnel or funds appropriated by the legislature of the state of Wyoming, any other source of funds that originated within the state of Wyoming or any federal funds or other source of funds to enforce, attempt to enforce, provide material aid, support or participate in any manner in the enforcement or implementation of any act, law, treaty, executive order, rule or regulation of the United States government that solely regarding firearms, accessories or ammunition against any law-abiding citizen.”
Now, I’m not a lawyer but I can English at a middle school level or, on good days, a bit higher.
It strikes me that other than cleaning up the English a touch, what they’ve done here is remove words that are open to interpretation or may require a court’s judgement. That is, they’re attempting to make the law simple and inarguable in terms of when it applies.
For example, “unconstitutional act” becomes “act”. The first term has an adjective that is subject to interpretation and potentially legal wrangling. The second term is simply a noun referring to legislation passed into law.
The same basic thing happens later as well.
…rule or regulation of the United States government that infringes on or impedes the free exercise of individual rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States solely regarding firearms…
becomes
…rule or regulation of the United States government solely regarding firearms…
Which is actually removing a bunch of language that’s fertile ground for argument about whether or not something is or is not an infringement or impedes the free exercise of rights possessed by individuals under the 2A.
So, at a glance here it seems that this is actually them trying to remove squish from the language and make the law stronger, not weaker. I’d hazard the guess that they’re trying to head off any attempts to circumvent the spirit of the law by people who would argue that something’s not unconstitutional or that the State must enforce it until a court declares the law/EO/reg unconstitutional.
Which is a game the Left loves, to continue enforcement action while you have a Schrodinger’s Constitutionality issue as a means to effect as much damage as they can before being told to stop by a judge.
Ultimately, I’d like a comment from the people involved to see what they’re thinking but with all of five minutes allotted to this issue, I don’t immediately read this as being them behaving badly. I actually read this as some folks who actually understand how the Left operates and have decided to end-run the Left for once.
If that’s the case, I wholeheartedly approve and happily note that the total number of GOPers who seem to understand Lefty strategy and tactics might have actually breached double digits nationwide.
I’ll trade these guys for the DFL half of our Minnesota House, whom ( fortunately for us ) are currently sitting out the session until March, having kittens about a power sharing agreement. I say fortunate because they are part of the former trifecta that pissed away $18+ BILLION of our
” surplus “. Anyone wanna take a guess at their position on 2A rights ?
Anyone wanna take a guess at their position on 2A rights?
I’d guess they’d like to spend another $18B making it harder for you to exercise those rights?
Sounds like a cleaner bill. Since penalty was removed, could civil rights violations be better enforced, under existing law elsewhere, in state and/or federal court?
Theoretically, as written it may not need the original enforcement mechanism because the law cuts off funding.
Which means that if you do what the law prohibits, you’ve misappropriated funds basically by definition unless you can prove you did the work 100% for free at all levels and in all regards.
I would suspect opens the offending party up to liability for rights violations as well as misappropriation, misappropriation that an enterprising AG might make into an embezzlement charge.
Any wording is vunerable to interpretation; doing so is the life skill of tyrants.
“All words are made up”.
– – Abby Sciuto
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”?
– – Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
The Lewis Carroll quote is apt.
If you’ll allow me (which you have no real choice in since I’m typing it out regardless, so skip over this if you like) let’s actually take that apart a bit because it’s a fairly complicated set of thoughts distilled into a very short statement. It is also really rather more important than many might suspect.
===
While it’s true that words could be said to be somewhat synthetic, sounds we make by vibrating the air and to which we attach meaning, it’s also the case that, as Carroll is obliquely pointing out; the overarching reason for words is communication between members of the species and this is only possible so long as we have general agreement as to the meaning of those words.
Those in power have some level of personal and professional interesting in controlling the meaning of words for their own purposes. Those purposes generally all run towards a goal of maintaining and/or increasing power for those doing this and being able to change the definition of a word by decree is a valuable tool in the toolkit for such maintenance of power.
Language does naturally drift over time, we can see that in regards to the term “well regulated” contained within the 2A where the modern interpretation of the term is really quite different than what was intended by the authors of the statement.
In this regard we have a bit of conundrum when faced with people who understand and wish to wield the power of defining words.
On the one hand we might say that words are synthetic and therefore we have no particular reason or right to demand that language be allowed to evolve naturally. It is, therefore, acceptable to simply redefine words at a whim provided [reasons].
This is an argument the Left prefers not just for the power it grants if accepted but also because it dovetails with Communist hypothesis on the malleability of man.
Let me point out here that we ought to respect this hypothesis because it’s not entirely wrong. That doesn’t make it entirely correct either but the hypothesis does contain predictive power and we should recognize and respect that the way we might recognize that the enemy’s artillery actually does function. It’s not an endorsement of the enemy to say this, it’s a statement of demonstrable fact.
However, I would argue that this hypothesis should be generally rejected, not just for the danger contained therein but also for the fact that it ignores the nuances which are actually most critical and therefore while containing some level of predictive power this hypothesis is actually really rather unwieldy. In short, people are more plastic than many animals are but we are not infinitely flexible in this regard. Any attempt to *remake man* will, if pushed, eventually run headlong into that thing we refer to as “human nature”. The Soviets discovered this. Man was much more pliable than we in the West might like to think, but not as pliable as people like Lenin had hoped.
Interestingly, Pavlov figured this out with dogs as well but that’s a rather long digression from the current topic.
I would counter that words are no more synthetic than the vocalizations of any other creature on the planet, many of which are quite complicated even in “lower” species. Creatures do what creatures do based on their natural proclivities and capacities. One of the things creatures do is communicate with other creatures via various mechanisms.
Therefore communication via vocalization is a natural phenomenon inherent to many creatures and cannot be said to set man apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Now, some of those communication capacities will produces downstream effects that no one of sound mind would call “synthetic”. A beaver dam for example. Beavers make noises that other beavers would seem to understand and they’re capable of actually rather impressive engineering feats to boot. Engineering feats that require coordination on a rather remarkable level, actually. So, if the dam is downstream, even minimally, from the noises the creatures make and the noises are natural then the dam can, quite rightly, be said to be a natural product of a natural behavior.
I fail to see how this would be different for people, though we may increase the complexity of the downstream behaviors in many cases.
Therefore, we should demand that people master language, not become the master of a language. Subsumed in that demand is the implicit instruction that language be allowed to naturally evolve and not be artificially altered to suit the desires of any person or person(s).
This would follow due to the fact that communication is a natural thing for many species, including ours, and it’s actually the overt attempts to alter that communication, via control of words’ meaning, that are synthetic.
Ergo, the argument that “words change over time” is a license to alter the definition of words faster than would naturally occur, and for the benefit of the people(s) doing the altering, is at best a stretch. If you want you could consider it an attempt at linguistic Gain of Function research.
Which means that when Leftists want to change the meaning of a word to benefit themselves or their argument, you can simply look at them and say “Bro, do you even trust the science?” and then chuckle to yourself as that bovine midwit look overtakes their face.
At that point you can add the cherry on top by stating unequivocally that dictionaries are entirely natural and therefore to be protected as part of the environment.
Preach it! Agree emphatically.
Long ago, I recognized that if the idea declared about words represented an authoritiarian leader, or group, most people were ignorant of what awaited (this, before I read Orwell). Essentially, words are power, and power cannot tolerate a vaccuum.
At university, in the 60s, the hippies and lefties proclaimed that 1984 was a warning about right wing tyranny (Reagan), which was any government that put limits on behavior the hippies and leftists wanted to exploit as a way to avoid responsibility (for anything).
If a person comes to understand only the interchange about words in “Alice”, they will have garnered the treasure hidden in the story.
makes more sense than my conspiracy theory.
that whole words have meanings thing bites again.
Mark it sounds like strych9 nailed it.
Dish out some Old West Justice,start with tarring and feathering ,if that doesn’t wake them a good rope party will
I disagree with the assessment of this article! I point you to Wyoming Gun Owners Association and Aaron Dorr. He as a video covering this. These politicians are rock solid Conservative Gun Supporters. They are strengthening the law not gutting it. Yes I’m am a Wyoming resident and a member of both GOA and WYGO!
Gun rights groups may disagree but should not work against each other! Why is GOA spending money and effort in one of the top gun supporting, toting red states when there are bigger battles elsewhere. I like love the GOA but they’re wrong on this one!
so the author is projecting.
Words like elections can have consequences. strych9 has made a valid argument for the rewrite.
More words opens avenues for arguments unfavorable to the intent of the subject contained therein.
I.e., get to the point with as few words as possible. Removing “unconstitutional” is paramount.
I too found it odd that the authors were all republicans. However, it is not odd that no democrats, as of this writing, had signed on to this bill.
Bet they’re democrap cocksuckers!
EVERY ONE PRETENDS TO BE A REPUBLICAN.
RED STATE CHAMELEONS
Have to go with strych9 on this one….the longest comment and the only one that makes sense….
Honestly he is one of the few where those two criteria can coexist.
“Honestly he is one of the few where those two criteria can coexist.”
If one cannot make their case in 144 characters, in a single paragraph, they should not be allowed to remain on the island.
I would go with keep things interesting in 144 or less but if you can’t be convincing with a few pages wtf are you even doing.
“…but if you can’t be convincing with a few pages wtf are you even doing.”
Skim reading?
The limit on free accounts for X is 280 characters these days.
You don’t want what happens if you do that with me.
The inability to actually incorporate nuance sorta turns me into a completely unserious, hard/alt Right leaning Libertarian troll and half my responses are just a callous use of memes in the most malicious manner possible.
If you can’t be serious, then my “Why so serious?” sides comes out more than usual.
“If you can’t be serious, then my “Why so serious?” sides comes out more than usual.”
OK, 280 characters (but exempting myself).
Some advice, in a musical format:
h-t-t-p-s://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94a_q0dAF-w
That’s eletronic noise overload, not music. Lyrics unintelligible, tune nothing but distortion.
Howver, funny, just the same.
Could be worse. I could have gone with… well like 85% of the songs produced by The Rolling Stones.
Seriously, they should have stopped after Some Girls. Especially after they managed to accidentally troll Jessie Jackson with the opening track.
@strych9
“they should have stopped after Some Girls.”
Indeed, they should have gone home after that.