MPPA Passes - Redux

Joel Rosenberg was at the Senate today, and passed commentary out to his blog via phone. I couldn't read the posts as they happened - my employer blocks LiveJournal - but I've been catching up.

A couple of points:

Senator Dean Johnson's aide came out, after that, and rather imperially demanded that we send our thanks to the Senator for keeping his word. I think that's only fair -- you'll find him at 651.296.3826, or right here. Please do call and email him; I just did, myself.

I just left a message, thanking Johnson and all outstate DFLers.

There's some really good news:

The Senate removed all of the silly amendments that came out of Skogie's Crime committee. No fingerprinting; no governments telling you that you can't protect yourself in a park; the same reasonable alcohol limit that we had no trouble living with. A whole barrage of silly amendments were voted down, and a couple passed that were just plain repetitive. (New language repeats the existing language that you've got to show your permit to a cop who asks to see it; it's ambiguous as to what -- if anything -- the penalty might be if you don't, say, because you've left your permit and your handgun at home. Not to worry.)

It could be worse.

Of course, there are reasons to be cautious:

The only thing I'm concerned about -- and we'll be discussing this, at length, over the next few days -- are the implications of letting the DPS be the gatekeeper for civilian carry permit training. On the good side, their validation system has been working quite well; on the minus side, one of the reasons it's been working is that NRA- or AACFI-certified instructors weren't required to submit to it. All in all, I think this is a definite win.

As Joel points out, it was a bigger win than even some of the more exuberant among us had hoped for - 44 votes. Joel predicted 43; my own semi-informed count said 40 or so. The 2003 vote was 37 in favor; 34 were needed to pass.

Best part? It's better than 2-1 in favor. I'd call that a mandate.

The House is next. It should be less of a white-knuckle ride.

Posted by Mitch at May 13, 2005 07:09 PM | TrackBack