By Dean Weingarten
Arizona – -(Ammoland.com)-
Representative Dan Fisher has started the process to strengthen Oklahoma’s state constitutional protection for the right to keep and bear arms in 2015. State constitutions may not offer absolute protections, but they can be very effective. A Vermont Supreme Court found their protection so persuasive, that the state has always had constitutional carry. It was never legislated out of existence as it was in nearly all the other states. In the opposite direction, six states do not have a state constitutional protection for the right to keep and bear arms. They are: California, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and New York. Four of those, California, Maryland, New Jersey and New York easily fall into the 10 most restrictive states in the Union.
The current Oklahoma protection is rather weak:
Oklahoma: The right of a citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person, or property, or in aid of the civil power, when thereunto legally summoned, shall never be prohibited; but nothing herein contained shall prevent the Legislature from regulating the carrying of weapons. Art. II, § 26 (enacted 1907).
Allowing the legislature the power to regulate the carrying of arms guts one of the main purpose of the constitution: to provide limits on state power. There is a clear example just south of Oklahoma, in Texas. There, after the radical republicans were driven from office at the end of reconstruction, one of the tasks of the new state constitutional convention was to restore the right to bear arms.
The Texas right to bear arms was one of the strongest in the nation before the War Between the States or the Civil War, if you prefer. Even slaves had the right to bear arms, according to the Texas Supreme Court. When the Democrats rewrote the Constitution in 1876, they left in a clause allowing the legislature to regulate the “wearing of arms”, and the legislature simply banned them in most cases. Historically governments take all the power that they are allowed, and work hard to get even more.
Representative Dan Fisher of Oklahoma hopes to strengthen the state constitutional protection. Here is the resolution that he has introduced into the House:
SECTION 3. The Chief Clerk of the House of Representatives, immediately after the passage of this act, shall prepare and file one copy thereof, including the Ballot Title set forth in SECTION 2 hereof, with the Secretary of State and one copy with the Attorney General.
Last year, the amendment was scuttled at the last minute, in conference committee between the House and the Senate. It had passed both with large majorities. It is widely believed that the amendment would easily pass a vote of the electorate. Voters have passed similar constitutional amendments in other states with wide margins. Alabama passed a similar amendment in 2014 with 72% of the vote; Missouri had strengthened its Constitution just months before with 61%; Louisiana in 2012 with 74% of the vote; and Kansas in 2010 with 88%. Wisconsin voters protected their rights with a strong amendment in 1998 with 74% of the vote.
c2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included. Link to Gun Watch
About Dean Weingarten;
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.