[South Carolina] Gun, ammo sales booming:
Gun sales are surging and ammunition is difficult to find across the Grand Strand, following a national trend that began in November when Barack Obama was elected president and was stoked by a fear that the recession will spur a rise in crime.
Sales at local gun shops have soared as much as 65 percent since the election. And since November, federal firearm background checks — required to become a gun owner — have outpaced previous years by 25 percent to 50 percent a month, FBI statistics show.
Many gun buyers are concerned that President Obama’s administration will attempt to push legislation that would make it more difficult to buy guns.
And some people say they are stocking up on weapons and buying guns to protect themselves in the event of a home invasion.
“What are you going to do? Throw a pillow at them in your house ... at 3 in the morning ... with your wife and kids there?” asked Tony Maloney of Myrtle Beach. “This guy wants to ban guns? They’re destroying the honest citizen of their Second Amendment right (to bear arms) ... or at least trying to.” ...
[D.C.] Support waning for more gun control laws:
WASHINGTON — Amid a wave of publicity about drug-related gun violence along the Mexican border and police killings in U.S. cities, more Americans than ever oppose new government efforts to regulate guns.
Recent polls show shrinking support for new gun control measures and strong public sentiment for enforcing existing laws instead. So strong is the shift in public opinion that a proposed assault-weapons ban — once backed by three in four Americans — now rates barely one in two.
Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, told reporters Tuesday that “every bit of data is showing us that Americans are getting more conservative about gun control.”
A CNN poll conducted in April found that 39 percent of Americans wanted stricter gun control laws, down from 50 percent in 2000. Another 46 percent said the gun laws should stay as they are, while 15 percent said they should be loosened — up from 9 percent in 2000. ...
[New York] Op-ed: Assembly dodges bullet by changing day of gun control vote:
What do you do when a bunch of gun advocates are coming to town by the busload and you're about to pass a bunch of anti-gun legislation?
You do what the state Assembly did this week. You run and hide. Or more specifically, you reschedule the votes to the day before they're scheduled to arrive, basically eliminating any chance that the lobbyists will have a chance to influence the outcome.
We shouldn't be surprised. This is how the state government works. They do things in secret so the public doesn't have a chance to give them grief for it. They prepare the state budget behind closed doors every year, then pass budget bills literally in the middle of the night. This year, they were even more secretive about the budget than ever. They do it with pay raises for appointed staffers. They're doing it with the federal stimulus money.
And this week, they did it to the gun lobby.
There's a word for that kind of governing. It's called "cowardice." ...
[Tennessee] House passes permit privacy bill:
NASHVILLE — The House voted 83-12 with no debate Monday night to make secret the names of all 220,000 Tennesseans who have state issued handgun-carry permits.
“This would make information contained in your handgun carry permit private and not open to the public,” Rep. Eddie Bass, D-Prospect, told colleagues, who passed the bill seconds later.
Meanwhile, House negotiators earlier in the day backpedaled on another permit-related bill and voted 3-2 to adopt a Senate version allowing permit holders to bring loaded pistols into bars and nightclubs.
Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, R-Collierville, the Senate sponsor of the measure shutting down public access to permit holders’ records, said he may bring the bill to the Senate floor next week. ...
[Tennessee] Committee removes restaurant carry curfew from bill:
A joint committee on a bill to allow handgun carry permit holders to take their weapons into restaurants that serve alcohol decided to remove restrictions passed in the House that would not have allowed the guns in age-restricted restaurants and would have barred the weapons from any restaurant from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.
The House panel in the committee voted 3-2 to recommend a Senate amendment that contained neither of the stipulations that passed the House. Rep. Curry Todd, R-Collierville and the sponsor of the bill, indicated to the AP that the restrictions he fought for in the House didn’t matter once the bill went to a conference committee. ...
[South Carolina] High court kills gun tax holiday:
South Carolina’s top court Monday shot down the state’s gun sales tax holiday, ruling lawmakers violated the state constitution by including an unrelated matter in the law, passed last year.
State Rep. Mike Pitts, R-Laurens, who pushed for the gun sales tax holiday — held for the first time the weekend after Thanksgiving — disagreed with the ruling.
“What they did was legislate from the bench, which is absolutely what they’re not designed to do,” he said Monday.
The S.C. Supreme Court unanimously reversed its earlier stance on the General Assembly’s practice of “log rolling” or “bobtailing,” which involves adding unrelated items — usually at the last minute — to a bill on a separate subject.
In recent years, the court removed the unrelated section of a challenged “bobtailing” law while upholding the rest of it. With Monday’s ruling, the justices said they would strike down an entire law if they found one part to be unconstitutional.
“The ‘bright-line’ rule announced today will deter log rolling, provide certainty and avoid arbitrary judicial enforcement of the one-subject rule,” Justice Costa Pleicones wrote for the court.
In striking down the 2008 law, the court said a provision dealing with the blending of ethanol in gasoline didn’t relate to the gun sales tax holiday or another provision creating a sales tax exemption for certain noncommercial, energy-efficient products. ...
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