Today's column is part four in a continuing series, and it is with sadness and astonishment that I bring you HB 394, which would exempt your representatives and senators from the very same gun laws that apply to you.
Rep. Calvin Hill (R-22, Canton) and several other cosponsors introduced a bill yesterday that adds current and former members of the General Assembly to the list of exempt persons contained in O.C.G.A. 16-11-130. This is the statute that exempts police officers, military, judges, coroners, and the little old lady that heads up the filing section at your local courthouse, among others, from the gun control laws applicable to carrying firearms in places of worship, bars, government buildings, courthouses, nuclear power facilities, colleges, high schools, and elementary schools.
You may review HB 394 for yourself by clicking here. The language being added is the underlined language at paragraph 15, lines 60 through 63.
Note that there is no similar exemption being added in HB 394 for regular Georgia citizens like you, a Georgia weapons carry license holder.
This bill would exempt the class of people who make the laws from the application of the laws to themselves. This legislative action fundamentally undermines the rule of law, the principle of which was eloquently stated by the last president known to carry habitually a concealed pistol.
No man is above the law, and no man is below it.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Rep. Hill's bill somehow manages to accomplish both evil results, placing himself and his fellow colleagues in the ruling class above the law while ensuring that the rest of us remain below it.
Either the law is a good law, and thus it should apply to everyone, legislators included, or it is a bad law, and as a result should apply to no person in this state.
We saw recently how a bill to exempt another favored political class from the gun control laws that apply to regular citizens was quietly and very quickly ushered through the House of Representatives and is already now in the Senate. Watch carefully, or they will pass HB 394 without a peep of opposition from you, just as they did last Wednesday when passing HB 60, exempting other government elites, with only three dissenting votes in the entire House of Representatives.
Three dissenting votes? Only three?
Has Rep. Calvin Hill introduced a bill in this legislative session permitting you to carry a firearm in your child's elementary school? Are the lives of his children worth more than the lives of yours?
This is part four in a continuing series. Part one is here. HB 60 The distance between citizens and their government is growing larger.
Part two is here. Three bills pending to restore the right to bear arms in church.
Part three is here. HB 29 Georgia Campus Carry Act of 2013.
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